Afghanistan: When counternarcotics undermines counterterrorism

Felbab-Brown, Vanda

doi:10.1162/0163660054798735

Cited by 24 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 4 publications

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“…With the fall of the Taliban in 2001, the continued criminalisation of the crop forced producers to look for protection beyond the state – and, as Goodhand notes, there was no shortage of non‐state ‘specialists in violence’– which is how local militia leaders (‘warlords’) were drawn deeper into the trade. This war economy has since mutated into what Goodhand calls a criminalised peace economy, where a highly flexible ‘pyramid of protection and patronage’ provides ‘state protection to criminal trafficking’, which has in turn allowed these ‘military and political entrepreneurs’ to capture large parts of the state (Goodhand 2008; see also Farrell and Thorne 2005; Felbab‐Brown 2005). This is a bare bones summary of an evolving situation, but even in this skeletal form it should be clear that the legal status of the poppy trade cannot be treated as an invariant, given that its most rapid expansion coincided with two periods of state‐building under the Taliban and the Karzai regime, and that the relationship between poppy producers, traffickers and state officials has thus been a constantly changing and not unremittingly hostile one 14…”

Section: Conceptualising Late Modern Warmentioning

confidence: 99%

War and peace

Gregory¹

2010

Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers

143

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Since the end of the Cold War two modes of ‘new war’ have been distinguished. One, the Revolution in Military Affairs, transforms advanced state militaries (particularly in the global North) through an emphasis on stripped‐down, highly specialised forces deploying cutting‐edge technology with unprecedented precision. The other is waged by non‐state militias and guerrilla forces (particularly in the global South) and relies on light, even improvised weapons, focuses its violence on civilians and is implicated in the criminal circuits of a shadow globalisation. Rhetorically, the first sustains a late modern ‘re‐enchantment of war’– war as surgical, sensitive and scrupulous – whereas the second reactivates a profoundly non‐modern ‘disenchantment of war’ as indiscriminate, callous and predatory. In practice, however, each bleeds into the other, so that it becomes necessary to expose the continuing horror of wars waged by the global North. One critical response is to show the production of three spaces of advanced military violence – the abstract space of the target, the alien space of the enemy Other, and the legal‐lethal space of the exception – and then to disrupt them through a series of counter‐geographies that challenges their claims to legitimacy.

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Section: Conceptualising Late Modern Warmentioning

confidence: 99%

War and peace

Gregory¹

2010

Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers

143

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“…A lightly armed International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) remained confined to Kabul and its immediate environs in the critical months following the fall of the Taliban, when an international peacekeeping presence in the countryside might have had an important signalling effect on both warlords and the wider population. 5 Continued Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and US military funding of regional warlords to act as militia proxies against the Taliban and turning a blind eye to the reinvigorated drug economy in 2002, so as not to compromise relationships with regional power holders (Hodes and Sedra, 2007;FelbabBrown, 2005), reinforced the decentralised political structures that had emerged during the war years. These decisions left a significant legacy by narrowing the intervention options for effective statebuilding in the years that followed and creating the foundation for the steady growth of the security crisis that prevailed in 2009.…”

Section: International Intervention and 'Post-conflict' Peacebuildingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Who owns the peace? Aid, reconstruction, and peacebuilding in Afghanistan

Goodhand

Sedra

2009

Disasters

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It is unclear how international donors' stated commitment to ownership and partnership 'translates' in fragile state or 'post-conflict' settings. The very notion of ownership is violently contested in Afghanistan and donors have to negotiate with, and choose between, multiple state and non-state interlocutors. The developmentalist principles outlined in the 2005 Paris Declaration may carry little meaning in such contexts and their application can have paradoxical effects that impede the emergence of broad-based ownership. The limitations of, and alternatives to, developmentalist approaches in fragile states, are explored here with reference to donor policies and practices in Afghanistan, focusing on the period following the 2001 Bonn Agreement. This paper examines how aid policies and programmes have become part of a complex bargaining game involving international actors, domestic elites, and societal groups. It argues that international donors' failure to appreciate or engage sensitively and strategically with these bargaining processes, when combined with contradictory intervention objectives, has contributed to the steady unravelling of a fragile war-to-peace transition in Afghanistan.

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“…While traditional practices of poppy cultivation and processing in Afghanistan are highly inefficient in contrast to those in Australia, they underpin rural livelihoods there. For the growing seasons between 2002/03 and 2005/06, the value of opium exported each year has ranged from over 60% down to 38% of Afghanistan's gross domestic product: (Felbab‐Brown, ; Goodhand, ).…”

Section: Discussion: How Law and Space Can Make Worlds Of Differencementioning

confidence: 99%

Licit Narcotics Production in Australia: Legal Geographies Nomospheric and Topological

Williams

2013

Geographical Research

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Licit narcotics production in Australia is based on the cultivation of a poppy crop restricted to Tasmania under local, national, and international regulation. Its legal geographical analysis is advanced by drawing on the thinking about 'the nomosphere' and 'topology' developed by David Delaney and John Allen, respectively. Australia continues to lead global production of licit narcotics as distinct new entities, relationships, and capacities have been enabled by differentiating between the constituent alkaloids morphine and thebaine with a loophole identified in US legislation of the 80/20 rule. Nomospheric and topological lenses are used to focus on the intensive, emergent qualities of the industry in addition to the traditional topography revealed in its scalar, networked territorialisation. A renewed understanding of the spatial workings and power plays relevant can inform possible transformation around narcotics production.

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Afghanistan: When counternarcotics undermines counterterrorism

Cited by 24 publications

References 4 publications

War and peace

War and peace

Who owns the peace? Aid, reconstruction, and peacebuilding in Afghanistan

Licit Narcotics Production in Australia: Legal Geographies Nomospheric and Topological

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