Securitization of Development Aid in Afghanistan: A Case Study of Kandahar Province, 2002-2012

Abstract

This thesis focuses on securitization of development aid in Afghanistan; it is in essence, a ca se study of Kandahar Province. The United States attacked Afghanistan in 2001, in response to the terrorist attacks by Al Qaeda based in Afghanistan territory. The United States objective was to stabilize the situation so that the Afghan territory could n o longer be used by the terrorist s to attack the US again . To that end, the United State s’ government used its military and civilian resources to secure and develop the cities and villages. The United State s chose the counterinsurgency strategy as the prim ary guideline and planned to materialize its stabilization program. In this strategy, the US blended its military forces and the civilian aid to fight with the Taliban and other insurgent group and provided civilian aid in form of development and humanitar ian assistance to the Afghan population in the insurgent hit provinces. My research findings suggest that the counterinsurgency strategy had difficulty in achieving its intended goals. Setting the security outcome s as the primary goal of the stabilization program critically undermined the development outcomes of which most were performed in small and short term bases. Informal and parallel security and development structures composed of Afghan warlords and foreign aid agencies were formed at the expense of the Afghan governmen t institutions. The US military, in order to achieving its goals, allied with the private actors to unilaterally conduct counterterrorism and counterinsurgency operations while the Afghan government was kept out of loop. In Kandahar, an intense violent rivalry kicked off among different Pashtun sub tribes for access to foreign resources, t arget killings in Kandahar city grew exponentially and the tribal infighting surged . Tribes that were allied with the Americans against the insurgents were targeted by the tribes allied with the Taliban and also those tribes working with the Americans to perform the US backed development projects were targeted by the Taliban and its tribal allies. The research finding added another dimension to the aid sphere in Afghanistan, the role of the tribes and the effects of the tribal structure of the Afghan society in the aid work. In this case, utilizing tribes and their influence in the aid and security sectors by the US military had adverse effect on the out comes of security and development.