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ID: 156640

Interpreting the “human terrain” of afghanistan with enlightenment philosophy / Walter, Ben

Walter, Ben	Journal Article
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In this paper I advance the proposition that Western policymakers’ perceptions and understandings of the conflict in Afghanistan are heavily influenced by certain political ideas emerging from seventeenth-century Enlightenment philosophy. This is particularly evident with counterinsurgency practitioners’ usage of social science disciplines to produce “objective” information about the local societies with which they are engaged. However, Enlightenment-inspired principles constrict practitioners’ perceptions of politics and political conflicts. These shortcomings are illustrated in both the form and content of policymakers’ efforts to gain “human intelligence” about Afghanistan’s social composition, and in the re-emergence of “human terrain” discourse. This blinkered viewpoint has left counterinsurgency practitioners unable to understand the United States’ own role in fueling Afghanistan’s conflictual dynamics.

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Counterinsurgency ; Political Theory ; Afghanistan ; Intelligenc ; Interpretive lenses

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ID: 146641

Securitization of development and humans' insecurity in Nangarhar Province, Afghanistan / Walter, Ben

Walter, Ben	Journal Article
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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.

Key Words

Human Security ; Modernization ; Women ; Afghanista ; Security Development Nexus

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