| Publication |
2012.
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| Summary/Abstract |
Ten years of international intervention in Afghanistan-why has so little been achieved? This fundamental question cannot be answered by focusing only on certain key actors, such as the armed forces. It requires a holistic analysis that covers several sets of actors and various sectors of the intervention. The analysis must also go beyond the day-to-day issues of coordination and resource allocation, and look into the basic questions of how the different sets of actors ascribe meaning to Afghanistan and themselves: their identities. What is the purpose of their being (there)? This article proposes to apply discourse analysis, not taking identities and meanings as a given, but focusing instead on the constitution of identities. By analyzing the military, humanitarian, and state-building identities in Afghanistan through their spatial, temporal, and ethical dimensions, the article seeks to demonstrate the utility of this approach for studying interventions, and to provide preliminary answers to why the results in Afghanistan have been so meager. The Western interveners have been struggling internally over a myriad of conflicting representations of Afghanistan and the Afghans; are in denial of their own power of dominance and political influence over the Afghan "other"; and refuse to recognize the political role and power of the Afghan other. Lastly, as changing the other will also ultimately change the "self," the former is circumvented, to ensure the preservation of the intervening self.
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