The securitization of development and humans’ insecurity in Nangarhar Province, Afghanistan

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 highvalue 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.