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Through successive waves of terrorist attacks, the city has consistently been the target - for reasons that are unlikely to change any time soon, writes Jason Burke

lmost 140 years ago, a wave of bombs exploded in London. Though they killed a relatively small number of people, they attracted a lot of attention.

The work of Irish extremists hoping to shift public opinion and political thinking about the future of their nation lasted several years. In October 1883, one of their bloodiest attacks injured 40 people on a tube train pulling out of Paddington station. Other targets included the offices of the The Times newspaper, Nelson's Column, the Tower of London and Scotland Yard.

Throughout the decade, there were other bombings elsewhere in Europe perpetrated by various extremist groups and hitting theatres, opera houses, the French parliament and streetside cafes. In 1920, Wall Street itself was bombed. The wave of attacks prompted concern about new technologies, such as timers and dynamite, which was said to be "cheap as soap and common as sugar", and drew debate as to how to protect cities and mass transit systems from violence.

Nearly 150 years later, a spate of recent attacks in major European cities have led to similar warnings. Experts tell us how easy it is to construct a viable explosive device with instructions from the internet, and warn of how we can, or can't, protect our public spaces from the new tactic of using vehicles as murderous rams. After a truck was driven into a crowd at a Christmas market in Berlin last year, the police chief, Klaus Kandt, pointed out that with so many potential targets - 2,500 such markets in Germany and 60 in the city alone - it was impossible to reduce the risk to zero.

With so many strikes in urban settings in the last two years, residents of London, Manchester, Paris, Nice, Brussels or Barcelona (to list just a few of those places which have suffered a significant attack in the last 20 months) have had little time to step back and see this latest wave of violence in any kind of longer perspective. But this is problematic. If a longer view teaches us anything about the strange times we find ourselves in, it is that the seemingly inextricable link between terror and our cities is nothing new.

Of course, there were key differences in the violence of the 1880s and 1890s. Historic attacks were mostly motivated by ideologies such as anarchism and extreme versions of socialism or nationalism, and the numbers killed or wounded were minimal in comparison to today.

War is urbanising. No longer fought on beaches or battlefields, conflict has come to the doors of millions living in densely populated areas, killing thousands of civilians, destroying historic centres and devastating infrastructure for generations to come.

Last year, the world watched the Middle East as Mosul, Raqqa, Sana'a and Aleppo were razed to the ground. Across Europe, brutal attacks stunned urban populations in Paris, London and Berlin, while gang warfare tore apart the fabric of cities in central and south America.

In 2018, Guardian Cities will explore the reality of war in cities today - not merely how it is fought, but how citizens struggle to adapt, and to rebuild stronger than ever. Join the conversation at theguardian.com/cities

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Today, terrorists are prepared to contemplate mass casualties on a larger scale, and religious faith plays a far more central role too. The Islamic State, among others, has demonstrated a desire to outrage, not convince; to disgust and horrify, not to influence. The systematic use of vehicles as weapons is unprecedented.

Yet one element remains constant - through successive waves of leftwing, rightwing, state and non-state, European or US, Middle Eastern or South Asian terrorism, the target remains the same: the city. Why?

'The urban area continues the rebellion'

Even in the fiercest post-colonial battles of the 1940s and 50s, where confrontations happened in the bush, they were still ultimately about gaining the control of cities.

The Algerian war of independence against France saw a long and intense insurgency in the hills, forests and fields of the sprawling colony, but it was the contest for power in urban areas that was crucial for nationalist forces. The climactic battle was for Algiers, and more specifically the capital's Casbah, the labyrinth of alleys and homes of the old city which was the base of insurgents employing terrorist tactics against the French and their supporters.

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French troops patrol the Casbah during the Algerian war of independence. Photograph: Sipa Press/Rex/Shutterstock

One key factor was the arrival of televisions in US and European homes, and radio across the Islamic world. Those fighting colonial regimes immediately recognised the implications. No one was going to report violence in the middle of nowhere. In 1956, the Algerian political activist and revolutionary Ramdane Abane wondered aloud if it was better to kill 10 enemies in a remote gully "when no one will talk of it", or "a single man in Algiers, which will be noted the next day" by audiences in distant countries who could influence policymakers.

The most intense period of urban terrorist violence in the west was the 1970s and 80s. In 1979, 1,019 attacks were perpetrated in Europe, and around 10 every week over the two decades. If much of the attention in the early part of the decade was grabbed by aerial hijackings or spectacular operations by Middle Eastern organisations. German and Italian leftist terrorists were primarily focused on urban targets. So too were Irish, Basque, Breton and other nationalists, and their diverse counterparts in the US and Latin America.

Through successive waves terrorism, the target remains the same: the city

Carlos Marighella, a Brazilian communist revolutionary, turned Mao and Che Guevara's rural-focused insurgency strategy back to front. "Beginning with the city and the support of the people, the guerrilla war develops rapidly, establishing its rural infrastructure carefully while the urban area continues the rebellion," he wrote in 1969.

Inevitably perhaps, the pioneering attacks which set new standards of lethality for terrorists - such as the bombings by Islamists of embassies and military facilities in Kuwait and Lebanon in the early 1980s - took place in cities.

Even the Islamist militant violence of the early 1990s, largely focused on the overthrow of local regimes with mujahideen often based in remote areas, involved a significant component of urban terrorism exported to metropolises in western Europe. In Afghanistan in the late 1990s, run-of-the-mill extremist recruits received basic training that equipped them to act as cannon fodder on front lines locally, but the best fighters were selected to receive further instruction in terrorism and urban warfare.

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The damaged US embassy in Dar Es Salaam following the terrorist bombing in 1998. Photograph: Alexander Joe/AFP/Getty Images

Unsurprisingly, the major strikes from Islamic extremists overseas targeted New York in 1993, Paris in 1994, and Nairobi and Dar Es Salaam in 1998. These heralded the new wave of terrorism of today, and obscured the ongoing threat from right wing terrorists like Timothy McVeigh, who bombed Oklahoma City in 1995. Attackers learned that the psychological impact of an attack on a population was amplified when it took place in a city. Inhabitants naturally extrapolate, if this school can be raided or this train destroyed, or a bus over there hijacked, all in my town, then it can happen to me or my loved ones, too.

If the urban environment offers practical assistance to the aspirant terrorist - a degree of anonymity, ease of sourcing components or funds, proximity to others in a network, communication facilities, transport - it also offers a wealth of targets. The nature of these virtually guarantees what all terrorists seek: attention.

A new wave of terrorism

Simply striking in a capital anywhere is a bonus for extremists set on undermining confidence in the ability of a state to protect its citizens, or of occupying powers to keep order. Bombing campaigns as diverse as that against the British in Palestine in the mid 1940s, perpetrated by hardline Jewish activists, and that in Baghdad in 2003-2005, which was largely the work of Islamic militants aided by some nationalists and Ba'athist loyalists, show just how effective this can be.

The Zionist Irgun's bombing of the King David hotel in Jerusalem in 1946, which killed 91 people, dramatically demonstrated the organisation's capability and the weakness of the British authorities. Just over a year later, the British announced they would effectively abandon their rule in Palestine, allowing the state of Israel to come into being.

In Baghdad, almost six decades later, the early targets of the militants seemed indiscriminate - the Red Cross, the Jordanian embassy, the United Nations - until it became clear that they were informed by a careful strategy of isolating the US forces from all support or assistance in their project to control the Iraqi capital. Within 18 months, diplomats from even Middle Eastern states, NGOs and the UN had all either fled the country or were confined to the bunker of the Green Zone. The US was on its own, fighting a war it couldn't win.

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A Kenyan soldier walks out of the main gate of Westgate shopping centre in Nairobi, 2013. Around 70 people were killed by the al-Shabaab group. Photograph: Goran Tomasevic/Reuters

But it is the strikes against ordinary civilians, in pubs and bars and hotels, on trains or buses, that stay most visibly in the public consciousness. In 2004 and 2005, militants targeted commuter transport in Madrid and London. That same year al-Qaida in Iraq launched coordinated bomb attacks on three hotel luxury hotels in Amman, Jordan, killing 60 people at weddings and receptions.

In 2008 a group of Pakistani jihadists attacked a luxury hotel, a Jewish centre, tourist cafes and the main train station in Mumbai, India. More than 200 people died. In Nairobi, Kenya, around 70 people were killed in 2013 by the Somalia-based al-Shabaab group in an upscale mall. An Isis gunman shot at a nightclub in Istanbul on New Year's Eve in 2016. Al-Shabaab struck again in October last year, killing around 500 people in a single massive truck bomb on a crowded street in Mogadishu. In all these instances, terrorists were able to dominate the news agenda for several days.

The history of terrorism is the history of our cities

That such locations are in the line of fire is easily explained, and often comes down to what the city represents. Rightwingers in the US see Washington as the seat of corrupt, evil power and New York or Los Angeles as decadent and polluting.

Islamic militants see similar perils in urbanisation. Often there is a historical factor; in Afghanistan, militants see Kabul as a city that has collaborated with successive overseas powers from the Soviets to the US. Or an ethnic or religious one; in Iraq, Sunni communities now see Baghdad as a hub of Shia dominance. The texts of many contemporary extremists reveal an outright animosity towards cities and urbanisation.

These are often contrasted with a lost rural idyll of social harmony and justice which, though entirely invented, is a powerful vision. Mohammed Atta, the Egyptian leader of the 9/11 hijackers was a student of town planning whose master's dissertation focused on the destruction of old parts of Aleppo to allow modern, western-style development. He saw cities as a battlefield between the old and the new, but beyond that, between an authentic Islamic and Middle Eastern identity and a westernised, faithless one.

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An illustration of the aftermath of a bombing carried out by Fenian Irish nationalists at Clerkenwell Prison, London, 1867. Illustration: Illustrated London News/Getty Images

This vision of cities as a conflict zone, a place of moral and political contest, is not surprising. If a terrorist wants to strike at a way of life, then modern cities are the places to do this. The London 7/7 strikes in 2005 took place on tube trains and on a bus. But, whether selected consciously or not, all - King's Cross, Edgware Road, Aldgate East and Tavistock Square - were representative in different ways of the cultural diversity of the UK's capital. Recent attacks in the Sahel have hit hotels and restaurants patronised by westerners and wealthy locals. One reason investigators cited for the selection a nightclub in Bali for an attack in 2002 was that few local people were rarely allowed in.

Yet beyond all of this, there may be a more fundamental reason why cities have always been so important to terrorists and to terrorism.

Most experts now date the emergence of terrorism as we know it today to the second half of the 19th century. There were earlier violent activists which some suggest qualify as terrorists - the Jewish zealots who took on the Romans in early the imperial province of Judea in the first century, the medieval Assassins of the 12th century, even the religious Thuggee cult from the 14th to the 18th centuries in what was to become India. But the consensus is that it was around the time of the Paddington station attack that the strategy of using violence to sway public opinion though fear became widespread among actors such as the anarchists, leftists and nationalists looking to bring about dramatic social and political change.

This strategy depended on two developments which mark the modern age: democracy and communications. Without the media, developing apace through the 19th century as literacy rates soared and cheap news publications began to achieve mass circulations, impact would be small. Without democracy, there was no point in trying to frighten a population and thus influence policymakers. Absolutist rulers, like subsequent dictators, could simply ignore the pressure from the terrified masses. Of course, a third great development of this period was conditions in the modern city itself.

Could the terrorism which is so terribly familiar to us today have evolved without the development of the metropolis as we now know it? This seems almost impossible to imagine. Even the terror of the French revolution - Le Terreur - which gives us the modern term terrorism, was most obvious in the centre of Paris where the guillotine sliced heads from a relatively small number of aristocrats in order to strike fear into a much larger number of people.

The history of terrorism is thus the history of our cities. The history of our cities, at least over the last 150 years or so, is in part the history of terrorism. This is a deadly, inextricable link that is unlikely to be broken anytime soon.
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Cities and terror: an indivisible and brutal relationship

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Through successive waves of terrorist attacks, the city has consistently been the target - for reasons that are unlikely to change any time soon, writes Jason Burke lmost 140 years ago, a wave of bombs exploded in London. Though they killed a relatively small number of people, they attracted a lot of attention.

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The bureaucracy of evil: how ISIS ran a city

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The bureaucracy of evil: how ISIS ran a city

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Part one - the rise: It was in the Iraqi city of Mosul that Isis attempted to prove its legitimacy - by transforming from an insurgency into a state. Alongside the murders and mass terror ran a functioning bureaucracy, with streamlined rubbish collections and electricity smart meters

very day, early in the morning, the former missile scientist would leave his house in Mosul. Riding buses, or on foot - he could no longer afford petrol - he'd call on friends, check on his mother or visit his sister's family. Sometimes he'd hunt for cheap kerosene, or try to score contraband books or cigarettes. Most often, he'd meander aimlessly - a traveller in his own city.

In the evening, he'd sit at his old wooden desk, bent over his notebook, recording the day. Most of what he wrote was banal: the price of tomatoes, a quarrel with his wife. But he also wrote his observations of the remarkable events unfolding in Mosul.

Just as in any totalitarian society, ​the majority of residents bent their heads and went on with life

"I must live this moment and record it," reads one entry, from August 2014, two months after the fall of the city. "We live like prisoners serving long jail sentences. Some of us will come out having finished reading dozens of books. Others will be devastated and destroyed."

By the time he stopped writing, he'd filled five volumes. They are the handwritten diaries of a city under occupation, and a chart of how the Islamic State tried to live up to its name - by running a city.

The rise

In the early days of June 2014, the new gunmen were broadly welcomed in Mosul. Unlike the brutal and corrupt Iraqi army, they were polite. They guarded public buildings, prevented looting and dismantled the concrete barricades that choked the city.

"There were no more car bombs, no clashes and no IEDs," the scientist wrote. "Mosul is at peace finally. They control the streets and people are awestruck. They allow people to leave Mosul, and schools are teaching government curriculums."

There was some confusion regarding their identity. Were they Sunni tribal revolutionaries? Ba'athist officers from Saddam's old army? Jihadi militants like al-Qaeda? These different groups had been a fact of life ever since the US-led invasion in 2003. For years, the factions had vied for power in Mosul, seeking legitimacy by waging a ruthless urban guerrilla war - first against the American occupiers, then subsequent Iraqi governments.

War is urbanising. No longer fought on beaches or battlefields, conflict has come to the doors of millions living in densely populated areas, killing thousands of civilians, destroying historic centres and devastating infrastructure for generations to come.

Last year, the world watched the Middle East as Mosul, Raqqa, Sana'a and Aleppo were razed to the ground. Across Europe, brutal attacks stunned urban populations in Paris, London and Berlin, while gang warfare tore apart the fabric of cities in central and south America.

In 2018, Guardian Cities will explore the reality of war in cities today - not merely how it is fought, but how citizens struggle to adapt, and to rebuild stronger than ever. Join the conversation at theguardian.com/cities

Was this helpful?

Thank you for your feedback.

Indeed, some were already acting as a kind of shadow government - "taxing" businesses and extorting a percentage from every municipal contract. Those who failed to comply were often kidnapped and shot.

"We paid them a percentage of every contract for a decade," said Azzam, an electrical engineer at the department of energy. "Eight percent. The head of our directorate would get a phone call from them before every bidding process. They chose who would win and who got appointed to what job. A third of all new vacant positions were set them. No one dared to disobey. Those who didn't pay were kidnapped. Every government institution was infiltrated, even the police.

"When Mosul fell, they appeared on the surface."

Two days after the fall of the city, one of Azzam's colleagues came to work dressed in an Afghan shalwar-kameez, and introduced himself as the new supervisor for the Islamic State.

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Isis released a propaganda video showing two deaf-mute brothers directing traffic in Mosul

The Isis city document

All of Isis's previous victories paled in comparison to the capture Mosul, one of the biggest defeats in the history of Iraq: the fall of its second city, the rout of 50,000 soldiers and policemen, and the capture of hundreds of tonnes of weapons, equipment and armoured vehicles.

And it was here in Mosul where Isis would attempt its most ambitious plan yet, the basis for its claims to legitimacy: to transform from an insurgency into a state.

A week in, Isis issued its first manifesto: the Madina [City] Document. In archaic language laden with millenarian references, Isis congratulated the people of Mosul for "these divine victories" and staked out its central promise:

Oh people, you have tried all the secular regimes, from the monarchy to the republic to Safavid [Shia] government. You have tried it and been burned by its fires. And here we are now in the reign of the Islamic State and the region of our imam Abu Bakr. And you shall see by the will of Allah the vast difference between a secular government, that oppresses and confiscates the will and energies of its people and erases their dignity, and our rule, which takes the divine word as a path.

The document banned cigarettes and insisted women should stay home, but in the streets people continued to smoke, hookah cafes flourished, women went unveiled, and many of the families that had fled Mosul returned.

The Madina Document was just the first step, however. The so-called Islamic State did not spring up in a single day. It arrived gradually, over roughly two months, via a series of actions and edicts - each new step affecting a different segment of society, raising the heat each time.

In many ways, Isis's project resembled other attempts through history to build a utopian state, from the Bolsheviks to the Taliban - a road map of authoritarian rule. First, promote a mythical founding ideology. Next, use it to purge society of undesirables. Use the utmost brutality so as to thwart any resistance; maintain a ruthless intelligence network to induce the population to denounce itself.

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In this photo released by a militant website, members of Islamic State group distribute niqabs to women in Mosul. Photograph: AP

But totalitarian regimes can't survive on millennial ideology and mass terror alone. They need a functioning bureaucracy and competent administrators.

Isis began by conducting an extensive census in Mosul. Army and police personnel, doctors, nurses, engineers and teachers were all registered, along with their families. Every shop, factory and commercial property was listed according to the religion and sect of its owners. "They came to us and opened the big land ledgers," a clerk in the agriculture department told me. "They wanted to know which lands were owned by Christians, Sunnis or Shia. We told them these documents go back to Ottoman times, and we only have the names of the owners - there is no way to find their religion, let alone their sect."

Isis ... dressed and talked like they lived in early Islam, but administratively they were excellent

Mosul resident Azzam

In true Stalinist style, the first purge was of former allies: other insurgents. Isis gunmen started detaining Ba'athis and army officers. Dozens disappeared; none returned.

A week later, the Arabic letter "N" (for Nazarene) was graffitied on to homes and shop fronts owned by Christians. An edict demanded that Christians either convert, pay a tax or leave with nothing. Christians were frisked at the city limits; some were taken as hostages or sex slaves. (Shabak and other Muslim minorities had either fled or been killed.) A few weeks later, another edict made the niqab compulsory, and banned all mixing of men and women.

When the concrete barriers that had been removed from the streets reappeared, now forming a massive wall around the city, Mosul effectively became a giant prison, hung with banners proclaiming the new regime slogan: "Permanent and expanding".

Its authority established, Isis now turned its energy toward creating a municipal administration. It abolished all existing government structures and replaced them with diwans, or ministries: health, education, services, finance, war, judicial/security, agriculture and others. Each diwan was headed by an emir, some of them foreigners; on top of it all sat the black-clad caliph, Abu Bakr, surrounded by his military council.

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Islamic State parade in an armoured vehicle down a main street in Mosul. Photograph: AP

The new administration was a hybrid: an attempt at running a modern-day municipality, but using behaviours, titles, dress code and language from 800 AD.

"The Islamic state was a terrorist state, but it was also a modern state," said Azzam, the electrical engineer. "They dressed and talked like they lived in early Islam, but administratively they were excellent and ran the state efficiently."

The department of electricity where Azzam worked was subsumed into the diwan of services, with a new boss: a French-Moroccan whose first move was to streamline fee collections.

"The process of issuing an electricity bill used to take us almost two months," Azzam said. "When [Isis] came, they simplified the system." All commercial activities, factories and shops now paid a fixed fee. In residential areas, Azzam said, Isis installed smart meters to provide a set amount of electricity throughout the month. "No one dared not to pay their electricity bill, fearing the horrible punishments of the hisbah [religious police]," he said. Stealing electricity was theft: you could lose your hand.

The same streamlined collection method was used for rubbish . Every street was handed to a particular garbage collector, who was paid by the residents; Isis issued cards with amounts to be paid, and inspectors came regularly to check the streets were clean and the money collected. Terror made sure everyone paid on time.

They were ingenious in envisioning new techniques to generate income. All confiscated lands, properties and factories, along with looted wealth, oil fields and cattle, belonged to the Diwan al Mal - the finance ministry - which used it to reward the faithful and generate income in a massive Ponzi scheme. Farmlands stolen from religious minorities such as the Shabak and Yazidis were offered as a share-crop investment to Isis members; Christian houses were distributed, and their cars and belongings auctioned off. Confiscated cattle provided subsided meat to Isis fighters.

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Refugees arrive in Al Qayyarah town, controlled by the Iraqi army, after fleeing Mosul after the operation to retake the city began. Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

Fuel extracted from Syria was sold to anyone willing to refine it. Some residents produced cheap petrol using home-made burners; others had small modern refineries. The desert roads between Iraq and Syria were packed with tanker traffic.

The trade of weapons, looted archeological artefacts, and enslaved women and girls flourished. War profiteers ensured that food products and fuel came from as far as Damascus, crossing multiple frontlines; modern equipment and medical supplies were smuggled from Turkey.

And, just as in any totalitarian society, the majority of residents bent their heads and went on with life.

One day, the scientist found his wife and daughters comforting a weeping neighbour, whose husband had interjected with Isis on behalf an old man accused of trimming his beard. Both men were flogged. All the adult males in the street were ordered to watch. When the scientist returned home, his son was furious: how can you let those people rule you?

In his journal, he tries to explain.

"People blame us for not trying to leave. My young daughter said we should all move to Kirkuk ... maybe I should have listened to her. But I was afraid of the future."
Read part two: the fall, tomorrow Follow Guardian Cities on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram to join the discussion, and explore our archive here Topics

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The bureaucracy of evil: how Islamic State ran a city

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Part one - the rise: It was in the Iraqi city of Mosul that Isis attempted to prove its legitimacy - by transforming from an insurgency into a state. Alongside the murders and mass terror ran a functioning bureaucracy, with streamlined rubbish collections and electricity smart meters

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A century of cities at war - in pictures

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From the Blitz to Beirut to Baghdad, some of the world's best photographers have strived to capture the scale and human cost of urban conflict

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JP - The rise of militarised policing in the UK

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JP - The rise of militarised policing in the UK

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Police chiefs are fond of talking about the way UK law enforcement is guided by a bedrock principle of "policing by consent": the idea that police officers are legitimised by a consensus of support in the communities where they exercise their powers.

Whether this has ever been true is another matter. Over the last four decades, there have been many in working class mining villages, in black and Asian communities, amongst numerous protest movements and in the north of Ireland who would profoundly disagree. Nevertheless, it is a comforting and prevailing fiction - even if it is hard to reconcile with the fact the police in this country are apparently in a permanent state of war.

These 'wars' on Britain's streets include, unsurprisingly, the unending 'war on terror', but also a war on 'gangs', a war on 'illegal immigration', a war on 'extremism'. Every battle requires an enemy and these wars are no exception, whether Muslim communities, or urban black youth, or political dissenters, or the 'tidal wave of migrants' the Daily Mail insists is the greatest threat to Europe since 1945.

The police leaders expected to prosecute these conflicts, like the generals of any army, are constantly insisting they need more comprehensive intelligence, improved weapons and logistics, more boots on the ground. Unsurprisingly, there is also a growing network of private sector companies, like their counterparts in the arms trade, whose profits are dependent on the continuance of irregular domestic war: on expanding the emerging policing and security market in Britain and exported it around the world.

The time has come for us to start joining the dots: between mass surveillance and data capture, the oppressive use of stop and search, the labelling of individuals as 'domestic extremists', the criminalisation of young black men and the racist targeting of migrants

In a 2012 speech after becoming Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Sir Bernard Hogan Howe talked about 'Total Policing': "using all the powers we have, all the levers we can access, all the skills and capabilities of our people in a total war on crime." He added:

"Our most important activity is often pre-emptive - targeting criminals before they strike - or preventative - trying to head off the risks... We will need to reorganise ourselves so that we can put more officers and staff into the teams who go into battle on our behalf".

Placing everyday policing on a war footing enables senior officers to claim the need to respond to alleged 'threats' to social order using extraordinary means - in other words, to break the notional rules of 'policing by consent'.

One result is a nominally unarmed British police who have shot dead Jean Charles de Menezes, Mark Duggan, Azelle Rodney, Anthony Grainger and Jermaine Baker, or who in 2014 alone threatened UK citizens with Tasers on over ten thousand occasions and fired on them over 1700 times.

Another consequence is a liberal society that is prepared to comprehensively spy on Muslim communities under the 'Prevent' 'anti-radicalisation' programme, increasingly extended to other so-called 'domestic extremists' involved in a wide range of activism from campaigners against fracking to bereaved families seeking justice following a death in custody.

So too is the changing approach to policing public order: more officers in riot gear, more mobile security barriers, the ultimately unsuccessful attempt to introduce water cannon to the UK mainland (defeated due to public pressure) . Another is the threat of eviction against families of alleged 'gang' members, a sinister form of guilt-by association familiar to occupied Palestinian communities; the fencing, barbed wire and scanning equipment at our borders; the systemic absorption of academia into developing greater police surveillance; or the operations conducted by police and immigration enforcement officers in search of 'illegals'.

The desire for ever greater intelligence by police means mass surveillance of our social media, the routine filming of demonstrations, the harassment of protest organisers, a database of young people 'at risk' of becoming drawn into a gang. Currently, a public inquiry is examining the grotesque tactics that undercover officers have been prepared to use to undermine organised political dissent.

So much for consent: the list goes on and on. Meanwhile, we are expected to avoid questioning why the police are acting more and more like an army of occupation.

After all: don't you know there is a war on?

The notion of police militarisation might sound like paranoia, but even the body representing rank-and-file officers has used it as a warning as austerity hits more 'old-fashioned' forms of policing. In part, this is because senior police chiefs know governments are always able to find money for responses to supposedly extraordinary threats: it's the reason why the Metropolitan Police will recruit 600 extra armed officers in the aftermath of the Paris attacks last November.

In March this year, many of the companies that provide the technology and support for militarised policing - and that help fuel the demand for ever more repressive or intrusive methods of 'Total Policing' - are gathering behind closed doors for Security and Policing 2016, a sales exhibition in Farnborough.

The event, which is organised by the Home Office and the arms industry's trade body ( ADS), has been billed as enabling exhibitors "to display products which would be too sensitive to show in a more open environment". Numerous national and international police forces, national crime units and military delegations will attend to network with delegates.

In response, a coalition of groups is arguing that the time has come for us to start joining the dots: between mass surveillance and data capture, the oppressive use of stop and search, the labelling of individuals as 'domestic extremists', the criminalisation of young black men and the racist targeting of migrants.

The militarisation of policing in Britain is already underway. If the police are using all the powers they have, all the levers they can access, all the skills and capabilities of their people to make it happen, then maybe we should consider the same approach to actively resisting it.
A public planning meeting takes place in London Thursday 21 January: Resisting police militarisation and state repression

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Police chiefs are fond of talking about the way UK law enforcement is guided by a bedrock principle of "policing by consent": the idea that police officers are legitimised by a consensus of support in the communities where they exercise their powers. Whether this has ever been true is another matter.

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JP - Why are the police becoming more like soldiers?

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JP - Why are the police becoming more like soldiers?

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Militarisation of the police is a developing phenomenon, spreading into nominally democratic societies as the bonds of popular consent to the status quo weaken.

In the last decades, militarisation of the state and surveillance of the population have grown exponentially in many western countries. Police forces, civilian institutions and even urban spaces have followed this trend of securitisation. Images of heavily armed police forces clashing against protesters in the US, UK, France and many other countries are becoming increasingly common. Leaked official documents have detailed the extensive surveillance programmes several states use to spy on their denizens, under the auspice of "national security".

While the "war on drugs" and the "war on terror" have often provided the pretext, those affected by militarisation and surveillance are mostly neither criminal kingpins nor "terrorists" but ordinary citizens. It has been political activists and groups, those who express dissent and protesters, as well it is true as small-time criminals, who have been on the receiving end of police SWAT team raids, extensive (often illegal) surveillance and assaults by heavily-armoured riot police.

Stretched hierarchies

But militarisation is about more than riot gear and police use of force. It can be perceived as a way for the state to try to retain its relevance and sovereignty in a globalised age, and therefore a tool to control and deter dissent. Since the 1970s neo-liberal capitalism has stretched social hierarchies as inequality has grown exponentially in many western countries. The crisis of neo-liberalism since 2008, which seems to be perpetually prolonged, may be part of the driving force behind a rebelliousness among those at the bottom end of the scale, while those at the top grow more fearful and impose more violent methods of dealing with this perceived threat to order.

Militarisation is spreading worldwide at an accelerating pace. The popular "common sense" is that it is necessary-indeed inevitable-in the face of modern challenges and security threats. While in train for many years, only now are its effects being properly seen and felt.

While the "war on drugs" and the "war on terror" have often provided the pretext, those affected by militarisation and surveillance are mostly neither criminal kingpins nor "terrorists" but ordinary citizens.

The state is spying on friends and foes alike. The "war on drugs" and the "war on terror" do not make sense in themselves: how can one make war on a phenomenon? They function as all-encompassing excuse to abuse state power, survey unaccountably and erode civil rights.

According to Peter B. Kraska, militarism is an ideology which assumes that the most appropriate and effective way to solve a problem is by force or threat of violence. Militarisation operationalises this ideology by "arming, organizing, planning, training for, threatening, and sometimes implementing violent conflict". When civilian police adopt and apply the military model, we see the result as in Ferguson, Missouri-a heavily armed, pugilistic stance towards the people they are charged to serve and protect.

The distinction between domestic and external security, between the police and the military, has blurred in recent years. From one direction, new communications technologies and transnational crime mean that what used to constitute internal security threats to a state are turning into threats which only a rival state could have posed just a few years ago. From the other side, while repressive governments, countries in a state of conflict and some other developing nations use military force to handle all security challenges, including internal ones, this practice is becoming more and more pronounced in longstanding democracies.

According to Dominic Corva, following Foucault, political power is focused not so much on sovereign, territorial, and disciplinary configurations, instead centring on the "biopolitical" arrangements of life within highly urbanised, mobile and digitally mediated societies. Utilising state-sanctioned force to control domestic and foreign territories through "sovereign power", biopower "produces subjects of governance through techniques of normalization". While sovereign power takes life or lets live, biopower fosters life or disallows it through the consolidation and propagation of acceptable freedoms. Biopolitical strategies of governance thereby render social orders, such as capitalism, hegemonic.

From hegemony to domination

The notion of hegemony as developed by Antonio Gramsci may perhaps offer a clearer understanding of the root causes of both militarisation and the radicalisation of activist groups, protests and dissidence. For Gramsci, hegemony operates primarily through the institutions of civil society and is linked connotatively to a chain of dichotomies: hegemony / domination, consent / coercion, civil society / state. The polarisation of society and growing inequality can be seen as the underlying source of militarisation, associated with a shift from hegemony to mere domination, from policing by consent to policing by force.

Take the US. There has been immense co-operation between the military and the civilian police in the last few years, with massive amounts of weapons and equipment, as well as military techniques, finding their way to police forces in many American cities. Police departments with access to such equipment, and having adopted military culture, choose extreme tactics in situations which hardly justify flash-bangs, tear gas, anti-tank vehicles and tactical gear. SWAT teams are meanwhile becoming normalised and employed to take a more proactive role in crime-fighting and prevention, away from their original purpose as reactive units for special circumstances. Even the language has changed, with terms that were only heard of in conflict zones, such as "insurgency" and "low-intensity conflict", finding their way into the vocabulary used to define criminality.

Gramsci wrote that societies only pose such questions as they can solve. And important questions now need to be asked. How can a democratic regime justify militarisation and the criminalisation of swathes of its population? What will happen to dissenting voices in an age of surveillance and militarised police-when speaking out can be considered a crime, a threat to "national security"?

For militarisation and surveillance are parts of a larger and even more worrisome trend, of enforcing greater control over urban spaces, social interactions, politics, culture and ideology to reaffirm a political and economic status quo. Presented as protecting the population, it seems rather that we, the citizens, need protecting from it.

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Why are police becoming more like soldiers?

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Militarisation of the police is a developing phenomenon, spreading into nominally democratic societies as the bonds of popular consent to the status quo weaken. In the last decades, militarisation of the state and surveillance of the population have grown exponentially in many western countries.

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JP - report from American Civil Liberties Union on the "excessive militarisation of American policing"

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JP - report from American Civil Liberties Union on the "excessive militarisation of American policing"

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The Excessive Militarization of American Policing

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JP - the failed war on drugs and the militarisation of the US police

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JP - the failed war on drugs and the militarisation of the US police

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In a fundamentally misguided effort to stop Americans from using drugs, the United States Department of Defense has provided over $4 billion in surplus military equipment -- often from warzones overseas -- to local police for free.

This equipment, including Mine Resistant Ambush-Protected vehicles (MRAPs), grenades, launchers, and other weapons, is turning America's local police forces into something closer to an army. The so-called War on Drugs has failed to stop drug use, diverted resources from addiction treatment, and had the absurd and dangerous effect of militarizing our law enforcement and our police. Fortunately, Americans are waking up to this new reality, and they are raising their voices online at DontMilitarizeMainStreet.com. Congress is also considering passage of the Stop Militarizing Law Enforcement Act, which would curtail the types of equipment that local law enforcement agencies can procure from the DOD.

Some background:

In June 1971, President Nixon declared a "War on Drugs." After that declaration, federal drug control agencies' resources and authority were dramatically increased and Congress implemented measures such as mandatory sentencing and no-knock warrants. Then, in 1996, Congress mistakenly gave the Department of Defense expanded authority to provide excess military equipment to law enforcement. Today, the program known as "1033" has provided a large number of small towns with tank-like MRAPs while others have received grenade launchers and high-caliber assault rifles. Even campus police are receiving advanced equipment and weaponry from the program for free.

The combination of expanded police authority and expanded access to military-style weapons has created a perfect storm for police violence. This year alone, in Georgia, a baby was badly burned when police dropped a "flash bang" grenade in his crib during an early morning drug raid and a grandfather was killed by police in a commando-style raid on his house in October. Authorities did not make any arrests, nor did they find anything at the house during the raid where the baby was burned. The evidence supporting the raid on the grandfather's house is in question . These are just two instances where the misguided War on Drugs has escalated to horrific levels due to law enforcement militarization.

As these stories and countless others indicate, militarization of law enforcement can lead to excessive force during the execution of residential drug raids aimed mostly at street-level, low-volume drug dealers. Furthermore, militarization fails our country by not solving the addiction problem while simultaneously blurring the line between police and military personnel.

Our founders opposed using a "standing army" to patrol our streets. In fact, James Madison called this "one of the greatest mischiefs that can possibly happen." Under the "1033" program, however, America's streets are increasingly patrolled by police forces with all the trappings of an army ready for war. Congress must end this unchecked expansion of military weapons into our civilian law enforcement agencies by passing the Stop Militarizing Law Enforcement Act.
Sources:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=207340981
http://www.drugpolicy.org/new-solutions-drug-policy/brief-history-drug-war
http://www.newsweek.com/how-americas-police-became-army-1033-program-264537
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2014/04/29/reader-submissions-from-small-towns-that-are-militarizing-their-police-forces/
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2014/04/18/congratulations-your-tiny-town-has-an-mrap-and-is-ready-for-war/
http://www.miaminewtimes.com/2014-08-28/news/miami-police-military-weapons-leso-program/
http://www.politico.com/story/2014/08/defense-surplus-university-police-110323.html
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2014/05/baby-in-coma-after-police-grenade-dropped-in-crib-during-drug-raid/
http://www.policestateusa.com/2014/david-hooks-raid/
http://www.macon.com/2014/10/01/3338309_attorney-alleges-warrant-problems.html?rh=1
http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/print_documents/a1_8_12s27.html

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The Failed 'War on Drugs' Is Militarizing Law Enforcement, Fueling Police Violence

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In a fundamentally misguided effort to stop Americans from using drugs, the United States Department of Defense has provided over $4 billion in surplus military equipment -- often from warzones overseas -- to local police for free. This equipment, including Mine Resistant Ambush-Protected vehicles (MRAPs), grenades, launchers, and other weapons, is turning America's local police forces into something closer to an army.

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JP - London 2012, Terrorism and Militarisation 

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JP - London 2012, Terrorism and Militarisation 

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The threat of terrorism at a global sports mega event such as the Olympics is nothing new. The 1972 massacre of Israeli athletes and the bombing at the Centennial Olympic Park in 1996 stand as tragic, historic examples of how terrorism has been focused on the Olympic games. Indeed, the safety of athletes, workers and spectators should be of paramount importance for those hosting the London 2012 Olympics. However, the ways in which security has been approached and implemented by the organisers of London 2012 reflects an ongoing securitization of sporting events and a militarization of cities which is somewhat worrying.

The issue of terrorism has been linked to the Olympic games in popular consciousness since the 1972 Olympics[i], and the focus on the threat of terrorism at the London 2012 Olympic games reflects a continued prioritisation of terrorism as an existential threat. The threat of terrorism has been given unprecedented focus before and during many major sporting events post 9/11, and the focus on security before the London games reflects a continuation of the trend. Indeed, the surrounding security debacle with private contractor G4S and subsequent military intervention of an extra 3000 personnel has gained almost as much, if not more coverage than the preparations of the athletes themselves[ii].

It is no surprise that the threat of terrorism is being taken so seriously by the organisers of the London games, after all, the horrific events of 7/7 took place less than 24 hours after the city of London had won the bid for the 2012 games back in 2005. In July 2012 the UK's Intelligence and Security Parliamentary Committee has outlined the three major threats to the games as being an attack on the games or participants from al Qaeda, Irish republican attacks or hoaxes intended to cause disruption, and clashes between rival groups not normally a threat to the UK[iii]. But regardless of the nature of the threat, the ways in which security has become as synonymous with the Olympics as the 100m final, gold medals and corporate sponsorship, are interesting and reflect a re-calibration of security. Boyle and Haggerty argue that sports mega events such as the Olympics are key sites that highlight the dynamics of a changing ecology of security where urban centres, spectacular events and long standing legacies become paramount[iv].

The events surrounding London 2012 appear to give weight to their thesis. The precautionary measures taken by the British government will see the deployment of 17000 military personnel, within the urban locality of London and several other major cities in the UK. Which as various commentators have already pointed out, is almost twice as many than the UK has deployed in Afghanistan. These troops are supported with six batteries of air defence missiles (some located on the roofs of residential buildings), a helicopter carrying aircraft carrier stationed in the Thames and unmanned aerial vehicles patrolling the skies. The shift from London to what seemingly resembles Helmand province, deemed as necessary to ensure the safety of those attending the Olympics, highlights how the securitization of sports events has in turn led to the militarization of cities[v].

The most prominent cause for concern here is the ways in which the Olympic games have enabled the deployment of the most advanced security technologies on the planet within the city of London as if it is necessary and normal to do so. The presence of these technologies and practices within host cities creates a "common sense that intrusive security and surveillance measures represent an inevitable feature and future of urban life"[vi] where debates about the necessity, desirability and dangers of such practices become marginalised. Such is the focus on security at these sports spectaculars that organisers have to take into account an ever proliferating number of contingent risks that the capacity to manage or even identify these risks is exceeded[vii]. This in turn leads to the need to portray absolute security and the recent events surrounding the failure of G4S to provide sufficient security for Olympic events, alongside the stretching of MI5 and MI6 to their limits points towards how this has been so in the lead up to London 2012.

Linked to the militarization of urban spaces and the spectacular security that sporting events now encapsulate is how sporting events now lead to a long lasting legacy of security technologies, infrastructure and knowledge[viii]. Clearly it is too early to say if this is the case with the London games, but with the erection of a 17km fence with over 900 CCTV cameras, facial and iris recognition systems and drones patrolling the skies, the future of life in London after the 2012 games seems more and more Orwellian. Again what is worrying here is how naturalised this is becoming, where security practices become deemed as so taken for granted and normal that they are beyond discussion or critique. These security practices surrounding London 2012 serve to give orthodoxy to a prevailing security order where terrorism is given priority and excessive, intrusive measures to reduce risk become everyday in the face of contingency[ix]. It has been noted before that counter terrorist measures can themselves present a larger challenge to security than the actions they are intended to prevent[x], and debate surrounding security measures should thus not be subsumed, ignored and overlooked.

Therefore, it is wise for the field of IR and security to engage with the under explored phenomenon of the Olympics as a point of study[xi], and further exploration of the security practices surrounding the London 2012 Games could also be telling of how the dynamics of security are changing and evolving. The focus on the threat of terrorism, the securitization of sporting events and the militarization of London seems like a regression. Human freedoms and rights are seemingly being eroded in the face of contingency. Such is the desire for a secure games that graffiti artists who no longer work illegally, and have been paid to paint parts of the Olympic village, are being arrested and banned from using public transport or being in possession of tools that they need to do their legal jobs[xii]. Ironically it is a figure painted by renowned graffiti artist Banksy, of an athlete throwing a missile rather than a javelin, that best denotes the relationship between security and the London Games. It is a relationship where sport and security, the military and the city both become blurred. Let's hope they do not become inseparable.
Rhys Crilley is a commissioning editor at e-IR. He blogs at rhyscrilley.tumblr.com and can be followed on twitter @rhyscrilley. Read more from the e-IR editors' blog here.

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London 2012, Terrorism and the Militarization of the City

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The threat of terrorism at a global sports mega event such as the Olympics is nothing new. The 1972 massacre of Israeli athletes and the bombing at the Centennial Olympic Park in 1996 stand as tragic, historic examples of how terrorism has been focused on the Olympic games.

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JP - Fortress London: On counter-terror urbanism

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JP - Fortress London: On counter-terror urbanism

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Harvard Design Magazine: Fortress London: The New US Embassy and the Rise of Counter-Terror Urbanism

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A squat glass cube rises above the banks of the River Thames in Nine Elms, southwest London, colored with the same dark greenish-gray pallor as the murky wat...

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JP - excellent reflection on urban architecture and conflict in Belfast

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JP - excellent reflection on urban architecture and conflict in Belfast

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I wrote the following as a way of convincing myself that I need a practical foundation for my current research, something I'm not totally convinced of. I got a bit emotional near the end, forgive me!

I hope to frame the theoretical ideas of my research with practical 'on-the-ground' observations. I have chosen Belfast as a case study, not just because it's the city in which I live, but because it raises a set of interesting ontological questions with which I could interrogate the, at times, difficult to fathom conceptual notions of prime interest.

When dealing with the shift from architecture as an objective practice to a subjective art, I will inevitably be dealing with notions of individual and communal identity, particularly with regards to how the autonomous entities we refer to as conscious human beings organise themselves into sets of communities which, in turn, arrange themselves into societies. This will then in turn allow us to say something about designing spaces for these individuals, communities and societies.

Belfast, as a contested city, has been dealing with a magnified version of these issues, with particular regard to the period starting in the late 1960s up to now. Up to this time Belfast was experiencing significant growth, leading to severe strain on the city's transport network. The famous 'Matthew Plan' introduced a stopline to Belfast's development along with a series of 'new towns' to absorb any excess population who could not be accommodated within city limits.

This was closely followed by plans for a new urban motorway which was to take the form of a ringroad right round the urban core, proposed in 1967 and followed by the Belfast Urban Area Plan in 1969. The primary idea of this plan was, based on a projection that the growth of the city's population would continue, to create a series of 12 district centres which would serve the primary core, with specific amenities including shopping, leisure and education, provided at a district level. Co-ordinated 'slum clearance' was also proposed.

This plan corresponded with the beginning of 'The Troubles' in Northern Ireland, often perceived to have started in Belfast with the burning of 44 catholic homes in Bombay Street in the west of the city in August 1969. The riots that ensued, coupled with attacks on civil rights marches by police, lead to the re-emergence of the IRA. Soon after the loyalist UVF was formed.

The explosion of violence that followed resulted in a sharp decline in Belfast's population, making the 1967 Belfast Urban Motorway and 1969 Belfast Urban Area Plan, both of which were based on continued population growth, essentially irrelevant. On top of this, there was wide-scale opposition to both proposals, particularly from the residents of north and west Belfast who were to be either displaced or traumatically affected by the motorway plans.

This manifested itself with the idea of 'community action,' made evident by the Save The Shankill campaign and the Lower Falls Residents Committee, whose tactics ranged from grassroots political lobbying to threats of violence against the council workers and contractors dispatched to clear the slums. These groups acted on the assumption that, since the plans laid out by the Belfast Urban Motorway and the Urban Area Plan were now essentially unneeded yet were still going ahead, the work proposed for west and north Belfast was intended to fragment these 'troublesome communities' and move them away from the city centre. How else could anyone justify the systematic deconstruction of this particular way of life, as embodied in the old Victorian terraces?

Thanks to ongoing resistance from the residents coupled with the escalation of the violence, the majority of these plans were shelved. However, a significant amount of the 'slum clearance' went ahead, particularly on the lower Falls, and phase 1 of the Urban Motorway went ahead, albeit in the altered sunken version of 'The Westlink' (see above). These measures were enough to blight the area, blight which is still significant to this day.

At the same time, due to the co-ordinated paramilitary violence against businesses in the city centre, the infamous 'ring of steel' (see below) began to take shape around the city centre. Beginning with informal checkpoints and military presence on major routes in and out of the city core, security measures intensified over the 1980s to the point where citizens who wanted to access the city core were made to queue up to pass through turnstyles in ten foot high steel walls, only being granted access once their shopping bags, purses and briefcases had been searched and they had been frisked by military personnel. This led to a negation of ownership with regards to the city. The city centre was owned by someone else, be they military or paramilitary.

This removal of people from the city centre, be it through intimidation, both sectarian and state sponsored, or physical removal, both sectarian and state sponsored, coupled with a denial of civic ownership still profoundly defines Belfast today. The physical conflict has gradually dies out since the ceasefires of the early 1990s, causing politicians to hail the success of the 'peace process.' The sterilised neutrality of the city centre along with the extreme blight of inner city neighborhoods suggests that the conflict has changed fronts. We now have an ontological conflict.

In their article 'Redrawing cognitive maps of conflict: Lost spaces and forgetting in Belfast' Catherine Switzer and Sara McDowell describe how Belfast city centre is totally devoid of any official memorials or markers for the at times appalling atrocities commited in the past 40 years. Oxford Street bus station, a building that became synonymous with 'Bloody Friday,' has been scoured from the street and replaced with a contemporary office complex. The reports of eye-witnesses on the ground that day are gruesomely descriptive, comparable to reports coming out of Kosovo and Syria in recent years. Yet this traumatic event goes unmarked spatially, consisting only of individual memory and official documents.

When we compare this to a city like Berlin, where a large number of extraordinarily traumatic incidents were focussed over a relatively short period of time, these events are writ large in Berlin's urban structure. The Mitte area alone is replete with plaques and memorials, the most significant and moving being the Book Burning memorial in Bebelplatz and Peter Eisenmann's Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe.

This failure to deal with the past not only leads to a culturally vacuous urban centre which becomes the domain for the tourist and the shopkeep, but also a more significant problem. As Switzer and McDowell note, there are memorials and plaques outside the city centre, each community choosing to memorialise specific events within their own areas. This causes misremembered and highly editorialised versions of these events to be passed down the generations, reinforcing the 'us and them' tradition. Peter Shirlow describes this as "The criminilisation of the 'other' community and the failure to recognise (that) suffering was endured within both communities..."

What we need is a meaningfully culturally vibrant city centre which goes beyond gaudy tourist attractions, polished glass shopping centres and the halcyon days of linen and shipbuilding, beginning to speak of what we've been through and confront us with how truly awful it was in our day-to-day civic engagements. This will enable us to move forwards and mark off how far we've come. More than this, it will allow us to reclaim our city before someone else does.

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I wrote the following as a way of convincing myself that I need a practical foundation for my current research, something I'm not totally convinced of. I got a bit emotional near the end, forgive me! I hope to frame the theoretical ideas of my research with practical 'on-the-ground' observations.

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JP - How the Pentagon sees the future of cities

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JP - How the Pentagon sees the future of cities

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MUST WATCH - Megacities: Urban Future, the Emerging Complexity - A Pentagon Video

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According to a startling Pentagon video obtained by The Intercept, the future of global cities will be an amalgam of the settings of "Escape from New York" and "Robocop" - with dashes of the "Warriors" and "Divergent" thrown in.

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Interesting article on urban violence in San Salvador - especially in its relation to the context of the "war on drugs" in US cities.

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Though San Salvador's Mercado Central is statistically one of the most dangerous areas of one of the most dangerous cities in the world, an outsider wouldn't know it just by walking through. It is, admittedly, congested, stretching across a few dozen blocks that throb with tens of thousands of vendors, clogging the roads with makeshift stalls and tables. Women hawk tamales and bags of cut papaya, or ladle steaming coffee into flimsy polystyrene cups that buckle from the heat. Boys push wheelbarrows of ice water, bananas, and mangoes past rows of mannequins modelling cheap leggings. This is one-stop shopping at its most frenetic. Life and commerce thrum. Violence here is largely invisible - until, of course, it isn't.

San Salvador is both the political and homicide capital of El Salvador, a country where, since 2014, the number of murders has surged after the unravelling of a two-year-old gang truce. Gangs have been running Mercado Central for years. According to Salvadoran journalist Óscar Martínez, in a 2015 report on the swelling of violence in the city centre, they tell vendors "where they will sell, how much they will pay for the space to sell ... Sometimes they even tell them who to vote for." Gangs come to the market to recruit children to join their ranks, or to collect renta - a euphemism for protection money - from vendors and stores, or to menace and, when they deem it necessary, to kill.

In response, San Salvador's young mayor, Nayib Bukele, is attempting to solve the problem of this rag-tag market, in part, by dismantling it. It is an ambitious project for Bukele, an upstart politician who, at 33, and with just three years of experience in public service, won the most important mayoral seat in the country in 2015.

Previous mayors have attempted to physically remove unregistered vendors from Mercado Central, which led to rioting. Bukele's strategy is to entice them to move by building new markets just outside the city centre (construction is slated to be completed by 2018). Instead of haggling from makeshift stalls in the middle of pavements and roads, his plan would allow vendors to operate through leases, in safe and sanitary conditions.

The plan, known as the reordenamiento (reordering), also calls for the revitalisation of the city centre, where the country's oldest and most majestic buildings - including the city's main cathedral and national theatre - stand in disrepair, nearly forgotten. Such an aggressive embrace of gentrification is Bukele's way of addressing a fundamental disconnect between the rich and poor in Salvadoran culture, which he sees as one of the root causes of the country's violence. If you know your neighbours, Bukele believes, you won't try to kill one another.

Predictably, almost every vendor I spoke with at Mercado Central in January, less than eight months after Bukele had assumed office, resented the plan. "We won't move," an elderly woman declared from behind her tables stacked with bars of soap and children's toys. "It is our right to be here," she said. "If we have to, we will fight to stay!"

"Nayib cannot make us move!" someone else shouted.

"Oh, they'll move," Bukele told me a few days after my visit to the market. "They'll want to move. They'll pick up their own umbrellas and walk to the new market themselves." He paused, then cracked a smile. "And we're going to film it."

hat someone of Bukele's profile and limited political experience could gain control of a capital city is a sign of how impatient Salvadorans are with the status quo. Though El Salvador is about the size of Wales and comprises less than 14% of the population of Central America, it accounts for more than 35% of the region's homicides, nearly all of which go unpunished. Disenchantment with the country's two major parties runs deep. Bukele's party, the leftist Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN), began as a group of guerrilla revolutionaries during the country's civil war, which lasted from 1980 to 1992, but its leaders have lost their populist edge and the party is now widely seen as having sold out. Meanwhile, the conservative Nationalist Republican Alliance (Arena), which controlled the government of wartime El Salvador, is seen as the corrupt guardian of the elites' wealth.

Bukele, by contrast, is met with the fanfare and admiration of celebrity. In the past year, while reporting on the violence in El Salvador and the exodus of citizens that it has unleashed, I've heard Bukele's name - Nayib, Nayib, Nayib - issued like a trumpet call, from schoolyards in Oakland, California, to cornfields in El Salvador's sun-parched east. Even those who oppose his policies concede that he is making profound changes, and thus, at worst, speak of him with respect.

In 2015, there were 104.2 murders per 100,000 people in El Salvador. In 2014, the US averaged five homicides per 100,000

Popularity may not be the remedy for a social crisis, but it is at least a galvanising force - and, in El Salvador's case, a timely one. Nearly 25 years after a catastrophic civil war, which left more than 75,000 people dead, El Salvador is now effectively at war again. The country's three main gangs - MS-13, Barrio 18, and the 18th Street Revolucionarios - control most towns and cities, battling over territory, while making money from small-time drug deals and extorting businesses and locals. To disrespect a gang member, or neglect to pay rent, or pass into a rival gang's zone, is to risk death.

Following the collapse of the gang truce, prisons are now at 325% of intended capacity. Even tiny holding cells, meant for temporary confinement, are crammed with suspected criminals who spend months if not years awaiting trial. Police patrols are on the rise, and several illicit killings of suspected gang members have been exposed by a dogged local press, who risk retribution from both the police and the gangs. In 2015, a total of 6,640 Salvadorans were murdered - an average of 104.2 murders per 100,000 inhabitants. (By comparison, in 2014, the US averaged five homicides per 100,000.) More than 3,000 people were murdered in the first six months of 2016 - up 7% from last year.

Yet when I met Bukele in his office in January, he skirted the subject of violence, preferring to discuss the projects he had launched. "Look," he explained when I pressed him. "If you have a headache, what would you take? A Tylenol. But what you have isn't a Tylenol deficiency. You are stressed, or you are dehydrated, or something more severe. So you take two, and then that doesn't work, and you take four, and then 10." La violencia was a symptom of a more troubling disease, he argued, rooted in El Salvador's longstanding poverty and structural injustice. Though he was stating relatively basic principles of economic development, El Salvador is so mired in violence that, at present, few policy-makers are discussing the situation in these terms.

Finally, lest there be any confusion, he drove the metaphor home. "Here, Tylenol is the police. People want more police, and I understand. It's dangerous here - they have a headache, they want the Tylenol. But that won't solve the problem."

At first glance, Bukele's efforts -a pop-up museum in the city centre, reorganising the Mercado Central to offer walking paths and artists' studios, promoting skateboarding as a positive activity for the city's youth - seem like the unstudied pet projects of a starry-eyed rich kid. And it is true that Bukele believes that if you remove structural inequities, peace and prosperity will follow. But to do this requires not just money - Haiti, he points out, is still languishing in poverty despitehaving received several billion dollars in aid since the earthquake that devastated the country in 2010.

More important is what Bukele calls his "hidden project of inspiration", the degree to which he can convince Salvadorans that their country has the potential for greatness. In Bukele's estimation, projects such as the city-centre revitalisation do not just alter the physical reality of the city, but the relationship between citizens and the place they call home - and, by extension, their relationship with one another.

ukele's entry into politics was something of a surprise. Born more or less the boy prince of a wealthy and well-respected Salvadoran family, he seemed destined to join their business empire. After graduating from high school in the late 1990s, Bukele started working with his family's public relations firm, Brand Nolck Publicidad, which had recently signed on a high-profile client: the FMLN. Following the end of the country's civil war, in 1992, the FMLN was transitioning from a guerrilla movement into a legitimate political party, and sought to rebrand itself as a progressive, ideas-driven organisation that had divorced itself from militant tactics. Bukele was assigned to the account.

For him, it was a political awakening. "It showed me the reality of my country," Bukele told me. "It represented the people's fight for justice." Over the next few years, he enjoyed plenty of success - in public relations, working with his family's restaurant empire, and organising a vibrant concert series in the capital. But eventually Bukele grew restless, feeling what he describes as a moral imperative to try to fix social injustice in El Salvador. In 2009, for the first time, an FNLM candidate - Mauricio Funes - was elected as president. In 2011, at the age of 29, Bukele left the business sector for a life in public office, as a mayoral candidate for his former client.

Bukele was running in Nuevo Cuscatlán, a small town on the outskirts of the capital, whose elites (the Bukeles among them) resided in hilltop mansions, while the rest of the population lived in poverty below. Nuevo Cuscatlán was a longtime Arena stronghold, but giving a low-stakes candidacy to a young political arriviste such as Bukele carried little risk for the FMLN. His campaign would cost the party nothing, because he could finance it himself. Plus, Bukele would add a youthful, entrepreneurial edge to the party - a boon for a political organisation dominated by ageing former guerrillas.

Since his early days, Bukele's appeal has stemmed from his commitment to his own creation - the Nayib Bukele brand

Bukele's platform was to change living conditions for the poor, promising better education, healthcare, access to water, and public utilities. And while his popularity grew, he kept polling poorly. The fact that the city's most needy were staunchly behind Arena - a party that he felt favoured the wealthy - infuriated him. Bukele began berating his audiences during campaign talks and meetings. His general message was: If you continue to vote for a party that does not support your interests, you can't complain if things do not get better. It seemed like campaign suicide. And yet people rallied around the message. In March 2012, Bukele edged out the incumbent mayor Álvaro Rodríguez of Arena by less than 2% of the vote.

Since his early days in politics,Bukele's appeal has stemmed from his commitment to his own creation - namely, the Nayib Bukele brand. In San Salvador today, his cerulean signs, emblazoned with slogans - "New ideas are invincible"; "Your city works for you" - adorn the city like flags. Six months into his tenure, he redesigned San Salvador's seal, which he now wears pinned to his jacket. Reminders of his influence mark the city like a kind of municipal graffiti.

Few seem to scoff at his enthusiastic self-promotion. Unlike the civil-war years, when political allegiances were often motivated by fear, Bukele's fans adore him freely, emboldened, perhaps, by the feeling that they are choosing someone who does not appear confined by political tradition. In fact, he has long since become disenchanted with his own party, the FMLN, and is outspokenly critical of its leadership. This only increases his popularity and the sense that he operates according to his own principles.

Along the way, Bukele has picked up a few enemies. San Salvador's two most popular print newspapers - La Prensa Grafica and El Diaro de Hoy - seldom run stories about Bukele's projects, leaning instead towards criticism and scandal. They have claimed that Bukele's family receives federal contracts because of his influence on the party leadership, although he denies this, and that he makes nepotistic appointments to government posts. (In early September, Bukele was sanctioned by the Government Ethics Tribunal for appointing his brother, Yamil, to an unpaid post as the president of the Municipal Institute of Sports.)

As a result, Bukele has turned to social media to publicise his work. He is known for Instagram posts that range from irreverent (an ongoing series depicting his flamboyant socks) to deeply reverential (a photograph of San Salvador's historic centre lit up at night). His Facebook feed, meanwhile, is supplemented by a team of photographers that buzz around him, documenting his every move.

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Nayib Bukele is fond of Instagramming his socks. Photograph: Instagram

Ironically, Bukele's popularity has begun to cast a shadow over his own party. In 2015, he publicly announced that if the FMLN reappointed the country's attorney general, Luis Martínez, whom Nayib considers "a gangster, very corrupt, the worst of the worst", he would abandon the party. Within days, the FMLN acquiesced, replacing Martínez with a new attorney general. (In August Martínez was arrested and found guilty of tampering with investigations and "procedural fraud", for which he was fined. In late September, he was arrested again in relation to another corruption scandal, although he denies all charges.) "It was a bluff," Bukele admitted, but one that worked.

Bukele's power is based on a form of leftwing populism that has deep roots in El Salvador. He relies on being loved by rich and poor alike, on urban and rural voters, on the old and young. To lose the votes of all the vendors at Mercado Central would not necessarily ruin his political career - there aren't enough of them to sway an election -but it could end up making him seem like a rich man with big ideas, who is no real friend to the poor.

Bukele claims that his projects, however giddy, are at their core intended to improve the lives of San Salvador's most needy. In January, he launched a public works initiative named San Salvador 100% Illuminado, the premise of which was simple. "We will have a light on every corner of San Salvador," Bukele promised the week before the project broke ground. Part of the intention was to improve security in the city's worst areas, but Bukele also said that he wanted Salvadorans to be able to boast that their city - like New York, like Paris - was a city of lights, the cosmopolitan heart of a country, a city brimming with potential.

"You can call it PR if you want to be a little cynical," he said. "But I'm talking about inspiration. PR is important. I have PR. But that is something earthly. I'm talking about something sublime."

n early 2016, as Bukele continued to carry out his project of inspiration - lighting up street corners and fixing potholes, Instagramming his socks and high-fiving kids on the streets - the federal government deepened its crackdown on El Salvador's gangs.

The previous summer, the 18th Street Revolucionarios had effectively shut down most of the country's bus system, assassinating eight bus drivers and two civilians, and threatening to kill any drivers who went to work. The attacks were widely understood as a show of strength in response to the government crackdown on gangs. In response, El Salvador's supreme court declared all Salvadoran gangs terrorist organisations, thus increasing the prosecutorial power against them. A state of emergency was declared at several of the country's high-security facilities, and the prison regime - which had allowed many gang members easy access to mobile phones, conjugal visits and other perks - was tightened. President Sánchez Cerén announced the formation of a rapid-response police team to directly combat gang activity, and judges began to issue prison sentences to gang members of up to 200 years.

In March 2016, in a video announcement posted online, a masked gang member of unidentified allegiance announced that the leaders of all three of El Salvador's main gangs were asking their members to temporarily stand down, in order to show the government that its "extraordinary measures" were unnecessary. Within a month of the video's release, the country's murder rate dropped from 611 per month to 353, and has held at around 350, or lower, each month since. The gangs' ceasefire seemed to be an invitation to the government to negotiate. But according to the President Cerén, that option was not on the table.

By June, government forces had killed 346 gang members; conversely, according to estimates from the investigative organisation Insight Crime, only 16 officers were killed during that same period. This was the Salvadoran government's third incarnation of an anti-gang policy, known as the mano dura (iron fist). The programme dates back to 2003, when President Francisco Flores, of the Arena party, wanted to project a tough-on-crime image, despite gang violence being relatively limited at the time. In 2006, President Antonia Saca of the Arena party doubled down with his own version, which he called super mano dura. Bukele sarcastically refers to this current incarnation as the " super super mano dura," pointing out that with each campaign the violence has only worsened, and the trauma to the country only deepened.

"It's never worked in the history of humanity,"he said of such heavy-handed tactics. "Why would it work in El Salvador? They don't even have the money to pay for it. It might lower [murder] rates for a while, but it will come back to haunt us."

Bukele considers the reinstatement of mano dura to be a war against youth - in particular poor youth, who are often arrested for agrupación illícita, or illegal congregation. The law allows officials to arrest groups of three or more individuals, who they believe have some kind of official structure and intend to commit crime. In other words, they can arrest any bunch of kids on the mere suspicion of being up to no good. This "crime" carries a punishment of three to five years in prison.

Young people are fleeing El Salvador in great numbers. Between October of 2015 and September of 2016 alone, US immigration authorities apprehended 39,884 children and families from El Salvador who were attempting to enter the country. "Who goes?" Bukele asked when we talked about the Salvadoran exodus. "Little kids don't go. Old people don't go. It's young people. Strong people, people who can work, who can produce."

El Salvador is home to 6.34 million people, but according to a Pew Research Center study, nearly two million Salvadoran immigrants and their children resided in the United States in 2013. While the country's exports totalled $5.3bn in 2014, the total from foreign remittances in 2015 - nearly all of which come from the US - was $4.3bn, up $125m from the year before.

In February, I visited a migrant shelter for youth in Reynosa, Mexico, just across the border fromTexas. The day I was there, the shelter housed about 25 teenagers. Six of them were Mexican and had recently been deported from the US,but the rest were from Central America. Among them, seven adolescent boys from El Salvador were waiting to be sent home, and they all told me the same thing: once they got back, they'd rest for a while, hang out with their families, then head north all over again.

The kids were seated at folding tables in the spacious recreation room. The day's activity was music, and an older man energetically strummed his guitar, urging the boys and girls to sing along while they played rounds of Uno. Occasionally, a few of the kids chimed in or lazily shook a maraca. Though none of the Salvadoran boys in the shelter were from the capital city, they had all heard of Bukele. Their eyes widened when I mentioned his name.

"Nayib!" a boy with sagging basketball shorts cheered. "He's cool." He slapped an Uno card down on the table and spat an orange pip on to the floor. "He really cares about young people."

A few months later, I mentioned this moment to Bukele, adding that every young Salvadoran I had spoken to seemed to adore him. "Too bad they don't vote," he said.

y May, the illumination of San Salvadorwas complete, and city workers had begun to disassemble several blocks of the Mercado Central. Bukele's team posted a video of the efforts, titled " A Historic Success", set to an inspirational score, on his YouTube channel. The camera pans across crowds of assembled municipal workers, across reordered streets, across new market stalls with the cathedral and national theatre standing majestically in the background. The shot approaches Bukele, who faces away from the camera, in the moments before a major public address on the steps of the Palacio Nacional. Cut to the workers, to the city. We never actually see the mayor's face. On the surface, it is an act of humility, but it is also a smart move, hinting at Nayib's presence behind all this, as he triumphantly surveys all the good work that no one else thought was possible.

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Picture of San Salvador's lights from Nayib Bukele's Instagram account. Photograph: Pic from Nayib Bukele Instagram account/Nayib Bukele/Instagram

In reality, not everyone was happy. On a dusty side street adjacent to the Mercado Central, where stalls once spread across a handful of city blocks, a phone vendor named Eric Canales was setting up his new shop amid screeching saws and the chaos of construction. Canales told me he had been promised that city workers would help people like him move. Instead, he had to scramble help from friends and family. He claimed that the government workers were asking for bribes to connect electricity and to help the merchants relocate. The move had cost him two weeks of business, and his regular customers now no longer knew where to find him.

"We lost our rhythm of sales," he told me amid the hammering. Sparks fell on to his ledger and he brushed them away. The space he was given was, he estimated, about half the size of his previous space. This was only a temporary relocation; when the promised new, state-of-the-art markets were finally completed, he would be asked to move again. As far as Canales was concerned, the reordering of the city centre was for the benefit of bigger businesses. Vendors like him were mostly on their own.

In late June, a few weeks after I last met with Bukele, a security camera caught footage of a group of men stealing the city's newly installed streetlights in broad daylight. According to the next days' edition of the Salvadoran news blog Ultima Hora SV, 53 lights had been stolen from the S an Salvador 100% Illuminado project. "I knew it," a Salvadoran friend told me. "Anything you try here," she said, "will fail."

Nonetheless, Bukele continues to project the idea that anything is possible, that the city's real problem is its deeply rooted cynicism. And considering Bukele's popularity and ambition, it appears almost a given - despite his insistence otherwise - that he will run for president in 2019.

Where does his optimism come from? It seems wrapped up in the FMLN's origin story, in which guerillas appealed to ordinary Salvadorans through moralistic messages and rousing songs. "I never have understood how a group with few resources - no media, with no social networks - inspired thousands, almost a third or half of the country. With a guitar? With a song? I haven't figured it out." Bukele shook his head. "But it's big."

Even if many of the FMLN have abandoned the idealism that shaped the movement, Bukele claimed, at the party's core, these values persisted. What his team was doing in San Salvador was "a modern exercise in inspiration. We're trying to inspire again, like the guerrillas did with a guitar and a song."He paused. "We're not heroes," he said. "But we have better guitars."
Main Photograph: Juan Carlos/Virginia Quarterly Review
This article is adapted from an essay published in the autumn 2016 issue of the Virginia Quarterly Review. Reporting for this story was supported by a grant from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.

* Follow the Long Read on Twitter at @gdnlongread, or sign up to the long read weekly email here.
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Can a millennial mayor save one of the world's most violent cities? | Lauren Markham

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Though San Salvador's Mercado Central is statistically one of the most dangerous areas of one of the most dangerous cities in the world, an outsider wouldn't know it just by walking through. It is, admittedly, congested, stretching across a few dozen blocks that throb with tens of thousands of vendors, clogging the roads with makeshift stalls and tables.

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JP -  Central America and USA refugee crisis

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JP -  Central America and USA refugee crisis

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Toxic mix of warring gangs and corrupt security forces is driving one of the world’s least visible refugee crises

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Until a few months ago, Carlos Hernández was a government health promoter in central El Salvador. His job was to visit poor families and ensure their children attended school and received health checks, in exchange for modest cash benefits.

One day in March, on his way to visit a family in a neighbourhood controlled by the Mara Salvatrucha (MS13) gang, Hernández witnessed a beating by gang members. Too scared to intervene, he hurried past, completed his visit and started his long walk home.

The four assailants were waiting for him.

"I pleaded with them to let me live. I said I had children, that I'd say nothing," said Hernández, 31. "They agreed to spare my life but told me never to return."

The victim was found dead three days later - one of 611 homicides in the tiny Central American nation that month.

Hernández was scared, but couldn't find another job. So when he returned to visit the same family a month later, he took a different route and left his uniform at home in hope of going unnoticed.

But he was spotted by gang informants, and the same four youngsters confronted Hernández with baseball bats, accusing him of spying for a rival group.

"They took down my address from my identity card, and threatened to kill my whole family if they ever saw me again. We left El Salvador five days later," said Hernández, now living with his wife and two children in a sparsely furnished room in Tapachula, in southern Mexico, where they are seeking asylum.

central america map

The Hernández family are part of an alarming exodus of entire families forced to flee widespread violence in Central America's northern triangle, the world's most dangerous region outside an official war zone.

As huge numbers of Syrian and African refugees risk their lives crossing the Mediterranean Sea to escape war-torn states, advocates say a parallel refugee crisis has unfolded on America's doorstep amid an undeclared but increasingly brutal war between criminal groups and security forces.

An estimated 80,000 people from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, mostly families and unaccompanied children, are expected to apply for asylum overseas this year - a 658% increase since 2011, according to the UN refugee agency (UNHCR). Tens of thousands more will be forcibly displaced, but not seek international help.

During the 1980s, the three countries known as the northern triangle were blighted by vicious civil wars between US-backed military dictatorships and leftist guerrilla groups. But even after ceasefires were agreed, peace never came to the region as unresolved inequalities and amnesties which let war criminals escape justice fuelled a new wave of violence and corruption.

This toxic mix of warring gangs and corrupt security forces is driving one of the world's least visible refugee crises, Amnesty International will say in a new report on Friday.

"What is shocking is the absolute lack of protection their governments are providing their own people," Salil Shetty, Amnesty's general secretary told the Guardian.

In El Salvador, people are fleeing - and dying - at the same rate now as they did during the country's 12-year civil war in which 1 million were forcibly displaced and 75,000 were killed. Last year, 6,657 people were murdered and violence forced at least 23,000 children to abandon school, in a country of 6 million people.

"The current internal displacement and forced migration is the same human drama we saw during the war," said Celia Medrano from the Civil Society Roundtable against Forced Displacement in El Salvador.

Often the same weapons are doing the killing: many gangs are assault rifles left over from the civil war.

While reaching the US remains the primary goal for most Central Americans in flight, Mexico is an increasingly popular final destination.

In Tapachula, the largest city near the Guatemalan border, shelters which once served transient migrants hoping to find work in the US are now full of frightened asylum seekers.

"Before, people left home in search of a better life - now they're fleeing overnight to save their lives," said Olga Sánchez Martínez, founder of Jesus the Good Shepherd shelter.

The shift is in large part down to the Southern Border Plan: the US-instigated immigration crackdown on Central American migrants, launched in June 2014 after a surge of unaccompanied minors that year, which has made it much harder to traverse Mexico.

The Republican presidential candidate, Donald Trump, has pledged to build a wall on the US-Mexican border to keep migrants out. But the proliferation of immigration checkpoints and bandits who prey on migrants has already created a formidable barrier, forcing people to risk clandestine new routes through even more isolated regions - or to stay in Mexico.

In the first six months of this year the Mexican refugee agency, Comar, received 3,486 asylum applications - a 150% rise compared to same period in 2015. More than 8,000 are expected by the end of 2016.

But despite a significant rise in approval rates over the past year, activists say too many asylum seekers are rejected or simply drop out because of long delays in processing.

The Hernández family are such a case: their application for asylum was rejected on the grounds they could return to El Salvador and move to a district designated as a safe space after a gang truce was brokered in 2012.

But the truce - which initially reduced murders by almost 50% - was abandoned in 2014. Since then, gang warfare, organised crime and police brutality have intensified across the tiny country.

"The gangs are stronger than ever, it's a national problem. If you move to a community controlled by a rival gang, you're suspected of being an informant -which is enough to get you killed too," said Hernández.

His wife Elizabeth Portillo, 24, said: "We left everything we had, our beds, cots, fridge, our families, to come and sleep on the floor in this room. We didn't want this, we left because we had to."

Rejecting asylum claims on the grounds people can relocate within their own country violates national and international protocols, according to Perrine Leclerc, director of UNHCR in Tapachula.

"Internal relocation as a safe alternative to asylum should only be used in very specific circumstances and not in small countries like those in Central America where violence is generalized," she said.

The family is challenging the decision, but appeals are rarely successful; in the meantime they cannot legally work and are reliant on stipends from UNHCR.

Comar did not respond to questions from the Guardian. But strong refugee laws coupled with pressure from activists means a small but growing number of families are being granted asylum in Mexico.

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Janet Machado, center, fled Honduras with her family after her 14-year-old daughter Gabriela, right, was shot in the shoulder and left paralysed. Photograph: Encarni Pindado for the Guardian

Janet Machado, 48, fled the city of La Ceiba in northern Honduras after her youngest daughter was shot and paralysed by a neighbourhood thug in January.

Machado travelled overland to Mexico with two wheelchair-using children -Gabriela and son Eric, 30, who is severely physically and learning disabled as a result of childhood meningitis - as well as her 17-year-old daughter Maholy and grandson Donavon, aged two.

Gabriela, 14, was shot in the left shoulder on her way to buy tortillas at the corner shop, following an argument with a male classmate. The boy's father, who was under the influence of drugs or alcohol, shot her at close range and kicked her unconscious body. The bullet damaged the spinal cord and remains lodged between her lungs.

"My life completely changed, just like that. I spent three months in hospital, I haven't been to school since January," Gabriela told the Guardian after a rare physiotherapy session. The family struggle to pay the taxi fair to the rehab clinic and do not qualify for UNHCR cash benefits.

After four months living in a crowded shelter in Tapachula, the family were recently granted refugee status by Comar. Eventually they hope to make it to the US to join Donovan's mother, an undocumented migrant working as a cleaner in Texas.

Going home isn't an option.

"Security in Honduras is getting worse, and you cannot trust the authorities. Everyone knows who shot my daughter, but he's still free. Even if they arrest him, it could make it things worse for us. We can't go back," said Machado.

A blend of organised crime, state brutality and deep-seated impunity left 8,035 people dead in Honduras last year, which has a population of 8.5 million.

In reality, those receiving international protection are a tiny proportion of those who would qualify.

Less than 1% of those crossing Mexico's southern border - or 3,423 people - sought asylum here last year. In comparison, 170,323 Central Americans were detained by Mexican immigrations agents, and most were immediately deported home.

In addition, more than 100,000 families and unaccompanied children from Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala were detained at the US southern border in the past year.

Nevertheless, neither the US, Mexico nor the northern triangle countries have acknowledged the escalating refugee crisis despite warnings from the UN and rights groups.

Meanwhile, many people are too scared to apply for asylum or are simply unaware of their rights, said Fermina Rodríguez, from the Fray Matías Human Rights Centre in Tapachula.

"People are fleeing Central America to save their own lives, to save their children's lives, in need of help. Yet Mexico's main policy - which is always directed from Washington - is to detain and deport them, to stop them reaching the US, rather than offering them protection," she said.

Leclerc, the UNHCR official, said: "The American dream still exists - but now most people are just looking for a safe place to live with their families; they're searching for a normal life."
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Central America's rampant violence fuels an invisible refugee crisis

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Until a few months ago, Carlos Hernández was a government health promoter in central El Salvador. His job was to visit poor families and ensure their children attended school and received health checks, in exchange for modest cash benefits.

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Jack Palmer - Stephen Graham on Hurricane Katrina. 

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Jack Palmer - Stephen Graham on Hurricane Katrina. 

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Stephen Graham (author of Cities Under Siege) has produced much work on the links between militarism and urban policies around the world. He is particularly illuminating here on Hurricane Katrina which struck New Orleans. August 2015 will see the 10-year anniversary of this event. Far from providing humanitarian relief to those effected by the flooding, what followed Katrina was a 'militarisation' of the situation, aimed at controlling and containing a supposedly hostile inner-city population.

For a brilliant, in-depth analysis of Hurricane Katrina see Spike Lee's four part documentary 'When the Levees Broke'

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Cities Under Siege: Katrina and the Politics of Metropolitan America

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Even Hollywood, so skilled in fantastical depictions of urban apocalypse, would have struggled to imagine the horrors of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. As well as resonating unnervingly with staples of urban doom in popular culture, the tragedy has remorselessly exposed some of the darker sides of metropolitan USA in the Bush era.