Security scales: spectacular and endemic violence in post-invasion Kabul, Afghanistan

Abstract

This article juxtaposes two distinct violent dynamics in a highly securitized urban space: one covered by global media in every detail, yet of marginal importance to the vast majority of city dwellers; the other endemic, but absent from outsiders’ urban imaginary of life and death in Kabul. Although insurgent forces have utilized Afghanistan’s capital city as a stage for acts of spectacular violence ever since the 2001 international invasion, for most city dwellers, especially women and children, domestic abuse has constituted the main threat to physical well-being. In contrast, increases in mortality and morbidity due to insurgent attacks carried out in the city between 2002 and 2011 have been infinitesimal. An interpretive framework that draws from critical geographical scholarship by highlighting global discourses and local norms helps expose that the international community’s discursive construction of Kabul as the locus for post-2001 neoliberal state-building lies at the heart of persistent, yet largely invisible, victimization within the city. The analysis demonstrates how such scalar politics of security have turned Kabul into an urban stage that provides global visibility of spectacular violence against foreigners while eclipsing endemic causes of bodily harm among Afghans.