CIAO DATE: 06/2009
November 2008
This Working Paper addresses the issue of security governance in North-Eastern Afghanistan. It deals with the impact transnational constellations of state and non-state actors have on governance outputs regarding security and development. Moreover, it tries to assess the way the Afghan population perceives of changes in their own security and of development challenges in recent years. The Working Paper proceeds in two steps: The first part, the case study, maps the relevant international, national and local actors in the target region and explains the results of the quantitative survey against the findings of the qualitative research on local societal and political dynamics. The second part gives a detailed discussion of the methodological approach, which is based on triangulation of data generated from quantitative sampling and qualitative field research. The analysis shows that security and development in contemporary Afghanistan may result from transnational governance. These governance outputs are local, i.e. confined to districts and provinces rather than regions or the national level. Transnational governance outputs, however, may in fact weaken governance functions of national and sub-national state institutions. This potentially puts them in conflict with the international strategy in Afghanistan, which aims at consolidating and strengthening Afghan institutions and strengthen their legitimacy.
Resource link: Auf der Suche nach Sicherheit. Die internationale Intervention in Nordost-Afghanistan [PDF] - 725K