The contested space of post-conflict development: Reflections of New Zealand Defence Force Personnel on working at the nexus of security and development in Afghanistan

<p>The distinction between the soldier and the humanitarian in insecure environments is increasingly being challenged. The deployment of military units, such as Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs) to Afghanistan (2001-2013), combine traditional civil and military objectives. These deployed units are tasked with enhancing security and governance, while facilitating reconstruction and development. Critics of the PRT model suggest that by allowing military units to conduct development work, a line is blurred between apolitical humanitarian activities and politicised military intervention, placing civilian practitioners at risk. Further, military organisational culture and identity are suggested to be incompatible with non-warfighting tasks. Adopting a feminist post-structural approach, I draw on the emergent security-development nexus literature in addition to post-development scholarship, to suggest that the fidelity of such critiques to a concrete distinction between security and development marginalises the experiences of those military personnel already engaged in development practice. The reflections of ten New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF) personnel deployed with the New Zealand PRT in Bamiyan Province Afghanistan (2003-2013) are explored in this thesis. This research concludes that personnel communicate multiple coexisting understandings of both security and development. These understandings inform their perspectives on their role as development facilitators, and shape their practice in the field. Personnel exercise agency to pursue development objectives not accounted for by the activities of the PRT. This exercise of agency is informed by personnel’s understandings of what development means, and is often explained with reference to their identity as both New Zealanders, and soldiers. Personnel draw on this New Zealand-Military identity to reconcile their position as responsible for guaranteeing security and facilitating development.</p>

The contested space of post-conflict development: Reflections of New Zealand Defence Force Personnel on working at the nexus of security and development in Afghanistan

<p>The distinction between the soldier and the humanitarian in insecure environments is increasingly being challenged. The deployment of military units, such as Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs) to Afghanistan (2001-2013), combine traditional civil and military objectives. These deployed units are tasked with enhancing security and governance, while facilitating reconstruction and development. Critics of the PRT model suggest that by allowing military units to conduct development work, a line is blurred between apolitical humanitarian activities and politicised military intervention, placing civilian practitioners at risk. Further, military organisational culture and identity are suggested to be incompatible with non-warfighting tasks. Adopting a feminist post-structural approach, I draw on the emergent security-development nexus literature in addition to post-development scholarship, to suggest that the fidelity of such critiques to a concrete distinction between security and development marginalises the experiences of those military personnel already engaged in development practice. The reflections of ten New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF) personnel deployed with the New Zealand PRT in Bamiyan Province Afghanistan (2003-2013) are explored in this thesis. This research concludes that personnel communicate multiple coexisting understandings of both security and development. These understandings inform their perspectives on their role as development facilitators, and shape their practice in the field. Personnel exercise agency to pursue development objectives not accounted for by the activities of the PRT. This exercise of agency is informed by personnel’s understandings of what development means, and is often explained with reference to their identity as both New Zealanders, and soldiers. Personnel draw on this New Zealand-Military identity to reconcile their position as responsible for guaranteeing security and facilitating development.</p>

Medical Diplomacy and the Battle for Hearts and Minds

Medical diplomacy leverages health care to win hearts and minds, pacify war-torn communities, and gather intelligence. Charging that medical diplomacy exploits vulnerable patients, critics chastise military medicine for repudiating the neutrality it requires to deliver good care. Military medicine, however, is not neutral. But it must be effective and looking at the wars in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan, medical diplomacy does not usually offer good care. MEDCAPs (Medical Civic Action Programs) and PRTs (Provincial Reconstruction Teams) fail to provide civilians with quality treatment. Suggestions for improvements abound and if medical diplomacy proves effective, then humanitarian force may utilize medicine for military advantage, pacification, and stabilization during armed conflict. At the same time, humanitarian war requires close cooperation between military forces and civilian-relief NGOs (nongovernmental organizations). Ideally, the former provides security and funding, while the latter work with local officials and stakeholders to build health care infrastructures and restore confidence in the government.

Military Medicine in Contemporary Armed Conflict

In the Iraq and Afghanistan wars (2001 and ongoing), military medicine saved more wounded than in any previous conflict. Improvised explosive devices (IEDs) injured tens of thousands of the more than three million warfighters deployed. Prominent wounds included multisystem injuries, traumatic brain injuries, limb loss, and post-traumatic stress (PTSD). To care for wounded service personnel, multinational forces established in-theater facilities for lightly and moderately wounded, while evacuating the critically injured to Europe and the United States. Coalition facilities could not offer comprehensive medical attention to host-nation allies or civilians. As the fighting progressed, multinational forces teamed up with local government agencies to slowly rebuild local medical infrastructures through Medical Civic Action Programs (MEDCAP) and Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRT). As the conflicts wind down, Coalition nations face their responsibility to rebuild each country and to tend discharged veterans at home. Both tasks prove daunting.

Doctrinal Adaptation in Iraq and Afghanistan

This chapter explores the role of doctrinal adaptability during the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The US Army’s conventional doctrine of AirLand Battle developed after the Vietnam War rejected counterinsurgency as a mission, which made the army poorly prepared for the recent wars. In Afghanistan, the army rapidly adapted its civil affairs doctrine to address the challenges of security and reconstruction, and ultimately established new provincial reconstruction teams. But the broader processes of adapting army doctrine for counterinsurgency took more than four years and a remarkable confluence of events and determined individuals—including General David Petraeus—in order to circumvent the army’s normal processes for developing doctrine and produce an entirely new manual in the midst of a failing war.

The Department of Defense

This chapter is one of three which examines a key U.S. department or agency which played a fundamental role in an 'all-of-government' approach to countering terrorism. The Department of Defense engages most visibly in direct action and is the US agency most often associated with counterterrorism-specific and broader security efforts abroad. This chapter considers women first as U.S. security actors in Iraq in units such as Team Lioness, and discusses controversy around women. Women in relation to counterinsurgency stabilization efforts counterterrorism and the National Action Plan on Women, Peace and Security are discussed, as are specific initiatives such as Human Terrain Systems Provincial Reconstruction Teams Female Engagement Teams and Cultural Support Teams. Second, it examines female security personnel the U.S. trained, equipped and otherwise supported in Yemen, Iraq and Afghanistan. Finally, it considers women's militant roles in al-Qaeda and ISIS to consider if or how these impacted on defense efforts.

Experiences May Vary: NATO and Cultural Interoperability in Afghanistan

This article examines the coherence of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO) coordinated military strategy during the war in Afghanistan. We argue that much of this coherence can be lost when decision makers adopt multinational strategic guidance that is then interpreted by different national contingents operationally. Different strategic and military cultures across troop-contributing countries may account for observed variation in operational outcomes, but better theoretical tools are needed to examine this phenomenon. Our aim is to further scholars’ understanding of how cultural variables can affect mission outcomes. This assumed effect of strategic and military cultures is explored empirically with reference to the Canadian and German Provincial Reconstruction Teams in Afghanistan, which formed part of the NATO-led ISAF operation.