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ID:
183264
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| Summary/Abstract |
The rapid fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban almost immediately led US policymakers to cast blame on the intelligence community for a failure to warn of the Afghan Army’s imminent collapse. Yet an examination of historical case studies from Vietnam and Iraq, and emerging evidence regarding Afghanistan, suggests that the real failure lies in the intelligence–policy relationship. In these three cases spanning 60 years, US policymakers consistently lacked receptivity to objective intelligence assessments that were critical of military missions to train and equip foreign armies facing insurgencies. Rethinking the intelligence–policy relationship to rely more heavily on working-level officials’ perspectives, demonstrate openness to bad news and integrate alternative intelligence analysis into the policymaking process would increase the likelihood that viable military policies will succeed in the future, as well as the likelihood that futile policies will be abandoned.
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| 2 |
ID:
146641
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| Summary/Abstract |
This article explores the way the USA's efforts to bring a securitized and militarized form of development to Afghanistan have often exacerbated many women's and men's human insecurity in local rural societies. In the countryside of Afghanistan, this development strategy has involved tying the counter-insurgency and counter-narcotics agenda of eliminating poppy crops to a broader neo-liberal goal, premised on building a thriving economy based on the modern agricultural production of high-value vegetable crops. However, what was misunderstood by those implementing this development programme was the disjuncture between their modernization-inspired vision and the way this programme actually fed into existing dynamics of power. Large amounts of foreign patronage were supplied to powerful domestic actors in Afghanistan, generating a hypertrophied and predatory state apparatus beholden to these actors. Simultaneously, these counter-narcotics agricultural programmes exacerbated conditions of poverty for poor communities by destroying informal systems of credit which sustained their livelihoods, producing novel forms of gender-specific insecurity for men but more especially women.
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| 3 |
ID:
138433
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| Summary/Abstract |
The decision-making surrounding the deployment of UK forces to southern Afghanistan in 2005–06 remains a matter of heated debate. In this personal recollection, Ed Butler, who led the British Task Force from mid-2005, highlights what he thinks were the shortcomings of policy-making and leadership within the political and military spheres during that time.
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