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2. Afghanistan's Legacy: Emerging Lessons of an Ongoing War
- Author:
- Stephen Biddle
- Publication Date:
- 06-2014
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- The Washington Quarterly
- Institution:
- Center for Strategic and International Studies
- Abstract:
- In an important sense, emerging debates on the war's lessons are premature. The war in Afghanistan is not over; nor is it ending anytime soon. Nevertheless, before conventional wisdom consolidates, two observations on counterinsurgency are worth considering now: whether it can work and how to approach governance reform.
- Topic:
- Security, War, Governance, and Reform
- Political Geography:
- Afghanistan and America
3. Security Sector Reform (SSR) in Insecure Environments: Learning from Afghanistan
- Author:
- Mark Sedra, Major Gen (ret.) Andrew Mackay, and Geoff Burt
- Publication Date:
- 10-2011
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Journal of Security Sector Management
- Institution:
- Centre for Security Sector Management
- Abstract:
- The uneven impact of security sector reform (SSR) in Afghanistan, despite nearly a decade-long commitment and billions of dollars invested, demonstrates the immense and perhaps insurmountable challenge of effectively implementing the process amidst an active conflict. The SSR model was largely developed for post-conflict and post-authoritarian environments featuring favorable political conditions for reform. In Afghanistan, the SSR project and the Bonn political dispensation has faced progressively greater levels of violence with each passing year, reaching the level of a full-blown war covering large parts of the country by 2008. In the absence of a genuine political settlement with the Taliban and other stakeholders, the SSR process has been conceived of and applied as a means to confront the growing insurgency, rather than as part of a larger state building and democratization project, as it was intended. It is difficult to imagine a more inhospitable environment for SSR than the one that confronted Afghan and international state builders in the wake of the Taliban's ouster in late 2001. Over two decades of intense civil war left little institutional infrastructure and human capacity to build upon; public attitudes toward the state and security sector were marked by mistrust and suspicion; and insecurity, whether caused by insurgent activity, crime or inter-communal violence was widespread.
- Topic:
- Security and Reform
- Political Geography:
- Afghanistan and Taliban