This submission includes two studies, based primarily on the use of historical archives, of the Afghan wars from 1978 and the Iraq War from 2003. Breeding Ground: Afghanistan and the Origins of Islamist Terrorism (2011) is a study of various layers of the Afghan conflict: the 1978 communist coup; the 1979 Soviet invasion and America’s proxy war against the Soviet occupying forces in the 1980s; and the rise of the Taliban in the 1990s. It shows how Islamist groups allied to the West against Soviet and Afghan communism turned into enemies of the United States, with consequences including the September 11, 2001 attacks, President George W. Bush’s retaliation against the Taliban in Afghanistan, and the invasion of Iraq. Overcoming the Bush Legacy in Iraq and Afghanistan (2010) is an analysis of the George W. Bush presidency in terms of its “war on terror.” The books thus study the Afghan and Iraqi conflicts in the context of United States foreign policy, with particular emphasis on the interests, actions and motives of actors in the conflicts and the interactions between internal and external actors. The central argument is that these factors contributed to the development of a “culture of violence,” defined as that “condition in which violence permeates all levels of society and becomes part of human thinking, behavior and way of life,” and how this provided space for “terrorist” groups to operate.

Over the past decade British troops have been stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan as part of what was previously called the 'war on terror'. During this period reports have emerged of British soldiers engaging in sexual abuse against local detainees, the killing of innocent Iraqi and Afghan civilians, and the use of banned techniques during interrogations. At the same time, widely televised repatriations of dead and injured soldiers have taken place, and a combination of the proliferation in use of improvised explosive devices by enemy forces and improvements in battlefield medicine has meant increasing numbers of soldiers are returning home with limbs missing and permanent disfigurement. It is unpacking how these specific acts of wartime violence have become possible that this thesis is concerned with. Specifically, this project will ask questions about the relation between contemporary constructions of British militarised masculinity - what I call a 'liberal warrior' - and the enactment of wartime violence. At its core, this thesis will argue that a liberal warrior subjectivity will never be stable or 'complete', and that it is in its precariousness and attempts at stabilisation that specific militarised violences become possible. Building on a burgeoning feminist literature on militarised masculinities and appropriating Avery Gordon's epistemology of ghosts and hauntings, I detail a way of conceptualising a militarised masculine liberal warrior that avoids mapping 'hard' and 'fixed' borders. Constituted through gendered discourses and hierarchical gendered binaries, boundaries are marked around a liberal warrior that excludes traits and characteristics a liberal warrior is not. However, those traits and characteristics that a liberal warrior has attempted to expel remain an integral constituting part of what is included, haunting the subjectivity, and destabilising its attempts at coherent representation. I argue it is through the appearances of ghosts - the concrete materialisation of an aspect of a haunting - that notice can be given to the ever-presence of hauntings. Focusing specifically on attempts at expelling - exorcising - hauntings of (homo)sexual potential, uncontrollability, colonial desires and fears, and the brutality of warfare in the (re)construction of a liberal warrior, the thesis pays attention to the materialisations of ghosts across multiple sites, including basic training, barrack living and during a tour of duty. Emerging as the banal and mundane, and also as spectacular wartime violence, recognising these materialisations as ghosts has several effects. It draws attention to the (im)possibility of a liberal warrior and always already haunting presences, it allows the conceptual space between everyday soldiering 'doings' and the spectacularly violent to be bridged, and it reveals the ways in which attempts at expelling hauntings and (re)articulating the borders of a liberal warrior makes these (sometimes violent) appearances of ghosts possible.

The purpose of this thesis is to examine the performances of gender that permeated the justifications for Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) in Afghanistan, focusing on the representational practices that dominated the Bush administration's narratives of rescue and circumscribed our understanding of the actors involved. In particular, I will argue that the image of Afghan women as the helpless victim of Taliban oppression not only allowed the United States and its coalition allies to cast themselves as heroic masculine warriors but also helped to reinforce the idea that Afghan women were little more than mere symbols of helplessness, placing them in a position of absolute inferiority and dependency. Crucially, I will claim that this image of Afghan women as the passive prisoners of the Taliban was contingent upon the suppression of a series of alternative perspectives that could not be accommodated within the parameters established by the prevailing frames of war. On the one hand, I argue that the dominant representations of Afghan women tended to show them in decidedly monolithic and one-dimensional terms, with the Bush administration and its coalition allies defining them almost entirely by the suffering they experienced. Absent from these accounts, however, was any mention of women's resistance to Taliban rule or their criticisms of the military intervention. On the other hand, I will show how the international community relied upon a particular historical narrative that allowed them to present Afghanistan as a barbaric aberration in the modern world whilst allowing them to dismiss the period of Taliban rule as a terrifying oddity in the country's history, destroying many of the freedoms that were said to exist under previous regimes. As well as ignoring the myriad of interactions between Afghanistan and the outside world and the complex social, economic and political forces that helped to precipitate the rise of the Taliban, I will argue that this historical narrative reinforced the idea that the lives of Afghan women were in a state of suspense during this period, their very existence as human beings held in abeyance until coalition troops could intervene to redeem them. What distinguishes my argument from the work of other feminists is my attention to the way in which these representational practices are contingent upon an uneasy process of repetition and reiteration, leaving them vulnerable to the possibility for subversion and resignification. Drawing on Judith Butler's work on performativity, normative violence and the politics of intelligibility along with Gayatri C. Spivak's work on the subaltern subject, I show how the activities of organisations such as the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) and the voices of individuals such as Malalai Joya help to expose the limits of the dominant norms of intelligibility, opening up the possibility for a less violent and less exclusionary re-imagining.

Among the most important choices made by groups fighting a civil war -- governments and rebels alike -- is how to allocate available military and pecuniary resources across the contested areas of a conflict-ridden territory. Combatants use military force to coerce and money to persuade and co-opt. A vast body of literature in political science and security studies examines how and where combatants in civil wars apply violence. Scholars, however, have devoted less attention to combatants' use of material inducements to attain their objectives. This dissertation proposes a logic that guides combatants' use of material benefits alongside military force in pursuit of valuable support from communities in the midst of civil war. Focused on the interaction between the military and the local population, the theory envisions a bargaining process between a commander and a community whose support he seeks. The outcome of the bargaining process is a fiscal strategy defined by the extent to which material benefits are distributed diffusely or targeted narrowly. That outcome follows from key characteristics of the community in question that include its sociopolitical solidarity (or fragmentation) and its economic resilience (or vulnerability). I evaluate the theory of fiscal strategies through a series of case studies from the Philippine-American War of 1899-1902. As a further test of external validity, I consider the theory's applicability to key events from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. / Government

The aims of the dissertation were to assess: the psychological peculiarities of Lithuanian Afghanistan war veterans; the risk factors and the intensity of risk factors relations with posttraumatic reactions. A sample of 268 Lithuanian men who served in the Soviet Army in 1979–1989 was investigated on the average 17 years after the service: 174 men – study group and 94 – comparison group. The questionnaire was completed focusing on life-threatening experience, posttraumatic stress reactions, and mediating variables – social support, adaptation, sense of coherence, consumption of alcohol and drugs (HTQ, TSC-35, CSS, SOC13, structured and open questions). Lithuanian Afghanistan war veterans have more long-term psychological after-effects than the comparison group. Lithuanian Afghanistan war veterans experienced significantly more service-related and non-service-related traumatic events and conditions. Their adaptation after the service and nowadays were poorer and alcohol consumption is far more hazardous than in the comparison. Sense of coherence, adaptation after the service, violent assault, loss of the family member and alcohol consumption nowadays predict PTSD. The model of Afghanistan war veterans’ psychological after-effects is presented and discussed. / Tyrimo tikslai buvo nustatyti: 1) kokie psichologiniai ypatumai būdingi Lietuvos Afganistano karo veteranams; 2) veiksnius, susijusius su vyrų dalyvavusių Afganistano kare potrauminės simptomatikos išreikštumu ir įvertinti tų veiksnių sąsajų su potraumine simptomatika stiprumą. Tyrimo dalyviai – 268 Lietuvos vyrai atlikę privalomąją karo tarnybą Sovietų armijoje 1979-1989 metais. Tiriamoji grupė – 174 vyrai tranavę Afganistano-Sovietų Sąjungos kare, palyginamoji grupė – 94 vyrai tarnavę SSRS teritorijoje, kur karo veiksmų nebuvo. Jie buvo apklausti vidutiniškai 17 metų po sugrįžimo iš tarnybos. Klausimyną sudarė Harvardo traumos klausimynas, Traumos simptomų klausimynas, Paramos krizėje skalė, Vidinės darnos skalė ir struktūruoti bei atviri klausimai apie trauminį patyrimą, potraumines pasekmes bei tarpinius kintamuosius – prisitaikymą, socialinę paramą, vidinę darną bei alkoholio ir narkotikų vartojimą. Lietuvos Afganistano karo veteranų ilgalaikiai potrauminiai padariniai yra sunkesni, nei palyginamosios grupės. Lietuvos Afganistano karo veteranų traumininė patirtis, susijusi su tarnyba ir viso gyvenimo yra sunkesnė, adaptacija iš karto po tarnybos ir dabartiniu metu prastene bei jiems labiau būdingas žalingas alkoholio vartojimas dabartiniu metu, nei palyginamosios grupės vyrams. Potrauminio streso sutrikimo pasireiškimą geriausiai prognozavo vidinė darna, prisitaikymas po tarnybos, patirtas smurtinis užpuolimas, šeimos nario netektis ir alkoholio vartojimas dabartiniu... [toliau žr. visą tekstą]

The United States has always been a very prominent user of hard power and has in most of its existence wielded a great amount of it, seen by their long military history. Another power the United States has a vast amount of is soft power, begging the question how this power has been utilized in the past, to for example create public support for military intervention. As soft powers impact on global security is immense, seen by the Ukraine-Russia war, recognizing how it has been used to justify military intervention in the past, and how it is used now. The importance of this effect and study is tremendous as it displays how a country can justify wars and influence public opinion and could possibly be used to identify a country in the process of trying to replicate the effect. The thesis proposes that there exist 2 effects known as culturally moulding and culturally swaying, which when used properly can affect the public opinion to a certain extent, which likely has been used to influence public opinion in the U.S on the 2 military interventions discussed. This subject falls in the line of security and power studies, wherein the main concept will be Joseph S. Nye’s concept of hard, soft and smart power, and it will be a qualitative study. The study will examine public opinion on military interventions and view them from a soft power perspective and consider why specifically these interventions were seen as justified. The delimitations to this study will be to keep the study to America, though there are plenty of other examples, and keep the case study to 2 military interventions, Afghanistan and Taiwan.

No description available.

This research examined the lived experiences of an Afghan Muslim male participant group. This study explored their immigration from a Southwest-Asian, highly non-secular society to a Western-style, liberal, secular nation-state. Further, this research was an examination of Muslim male identity as an attribute that is closely related to lived experiences, environment and cultural assimilation. Also, this study looked closely at the meanings that this Afghan Muslim male immigrant group attached to identity, as well as exploring their unique narratives during pre-immigration and post-immigration periods. This qualitative research study used narrative methods to unearth the lived experiences of five Afghan Muslim male citizens. These participants immigrated to the U.S. while serving as interpreters and translators for the coalition forces during the Afghanistan War between 2003 and 2012. Several researchers have examined Muslim immigration from Eastern to Western nations, focusing on their adaptation, assimilation, and developmental patterns. The research objective of this study was slightly different and important to social science in that it focused on how a select group of Afghan Muslim males conceptualized their own sense of identity and how their notion of identity was shaped and influenced by their own pre- and post-migration experiences. To this end, the discoveries in this study revealed that the nature of the identities for many in this study may be deemed more blended and in some instances renegotiated, holding onto parts of their core native identities while embracing aspects of the cultural, ethnic, and social elements of their new host land that fit within their own individual frame of reference.

Submitted by Maria Dulce (mdulce@ndc.uff.br) on 2014-05-14T20:03:09Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Trigueiro, Gabriel-Dissert-2013.pdf: 1230993 bytes, checksum: f54fb670fa26a260acf423b0f8c19fb6 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2014-05-14T20:03:09Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Trigueiro, Gabriel-Dissert-2013.pdf: 1230993 bytes, checksum: f54fb670fa26a260acf423b0f8c19fb6 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2013 / Este trabalho aborda as reações às guerras do Afeganistão e Iraque de diversos intelectuais envolvidos com a revista norte-americana de esquerda Dissent Magazine. Afinados com aquilo que chamo de campo liberal-left, parte substantiva desses intelectuais não hesitou em prover apoio às medidas militares adotadas pelo governo de George W. Bush. As causas originárias desse apoio são examinadas na presente pesquisa, bem como os argumentos daqueles que, no mesmo periódico, membros da mesma cultura política em questão, se puseram a criticar as ações de política externa do governo Republicano – bem como, por conseguinte, seus colegas de revista. A natureza desses embates e as consequências intelectuais para a cultura política liberal-left são investigadas a seguir. / This paper discusses the reactions to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq for many intellectuals involved with the U. S. left-wing magazine Dissent. Attuned to what I call the liberal-left field, a substantial part of these intellectuals did not hesitate to support the military measures taken by the George W. Bush government. The primary causes of this support are examined in this study, as well as the arguments of those who, in the same journal, members of the same political culture in question, began the criticize the foreign policy of the Republican government – and, therefore, their magazine colleagues.The nature of these conflicts and its intellectual consequences to the liberal-left political culture are investigated below.

La thèse porte sur la mise en scène de la guerre dans les entraînements militaires aux États-Unis. Elle étudie des faux villages moyen-orientaux qui servent pour l’entraînement de pré-déploiement en Irak et en Afghanistan. On retrouve ces villages sur diverses bases militaires, comme au National Training Center (NTC) de Fort Irwin (Californie), où une douzaine de faux villages afghans et iraquiens ont été construits depuis 2007 dans le contexte de la contre-insurrection afin de préparer les troupes aux guerres de type urbaines et asymétriques. Dans ces environnements immersifs, l’armée américaine tente de reproduire les paysages socioculturel et religieux où se tiennent les missions : mosquées, salons de thé, marchés extérieurs, maisons traditionnelles forment le décor. Afin de préparer les soldats au terrain humain, une rencontre culturelle est simulée entre eux et la population locale à travers des jeux de rôle. Des acteurs, qui sont parfois d’origine afghane et iraquienne, sont embauchés pour jouer la population locale, ce qui servirait à prévenir un certain « choc culturel » anticipé sur le terrain et augmenter la sensibilité culturelle des soldats. Des experts de l’industrie du cinéma comme des pyrotechniciens et des artistes-maquilleurs participent également à ces simulations pour les rendre plus « réalistes » à travers leurs effets spéciaux. La thèse étudie les rationalités et les technologies à l'œuvre dans les faux villages et les manières dont elles soutiennent cette mise en scène « culturelle » de la guerre. Elle examine les pratiques matérielles et discursives des performances qui s’y déroulent. En quelles instances les exercices de simulation s’inscrivent-ils dans un régime de représentation racialisé? Comment l’orientalisme américain est-il articulé dans ces espaces? Quels mythes politiques et discours dominants circulent dans ces géographies fictives? La thèse problématise la représentation et la production de savoirs sur l’autre. Ce faisant, elle participe à la discussion sur l’altérité entamée par plusieurs courants théoriques et champs disciplinaires dont elle s'inspire, notamment les cultural studies, les critical race theories et la critique postcoloniale. L’analyse est basée sur une observation de courte durée au NTC. Le Centre offre des visites guidées de la base qui permettent au public d’assister à une journée d’entraînements dans les faux villages. J’ai participé à deux reprises à ces « NTC Box Tours ». J’ai également mené des entrevues semi-dirigées avec plus de vingt vétérans d’Iraq et d’Afghanistan afin de discuter avec eux de leur expérience d’entraînement de pré-déploiement et du rôle de la culture dans les simulations militaires. / The thesis looks at the performance of war in military training in the US. It studies the mock Middle Eastern villages that are used for Iraq and Afghanistan pre-deployment training. These villages are found on several military bases such as the National Training Center of Fort Irwin (California), where a dozen of oriental towns were implemented since 2007 in order to prepare the troops for urban and asymmetrical type of warfare in the context of counterinsurgency. In these immersive environments, the US military tries to reproduce overseas sociocultural and religious landscapes: mosques, tea rooms, street markets, traditional houses and so on form the set. To prepare the soldiers to the human terrain, a cultural encounter between them and the local population is simulated through role play. Actors, sometimes from Iraq and Afghanistan, are hired to enact the local population. This is said to prevent an anticipated “culture clash” on the ground and raise cultural awareness amongst the soldiers. Experts from the filmmaking industry such as pyrotechnics and makeup artists also take part in these simulations – working to make them more “realistic” through their special effects. The thesis examines the rationalities and technologies at stake in the mock villages, and the way they sustain the « cultural » mise en scène of war. The research interrogates the material and discursive practices of the performances taking place in the mock towns. In what instances are the simulation exercices anchored in a racialized system of representation; how is the American orientalism being rearticulated in these spaces; what political myths and hegemonic discourses are circulating in these fictive geographies? The thesis problematizes the ways of knowing and representing the other. Therefore, the research takes part to the discussion on otherness initiated by diverse theoritical accounts and academic fields, such as cultural studies, critical race theories, and postcolonial critique. The analysis is based on a short observation at NTC. The Center offers guided tours of the base, allowing the general public to attend to one day of training in the mock villages. I participated twice in these “NTC Box tours”. I also conducted semi-directed interviews with more than twenty Iraq and Afghanistan veterans, in which they share with me their experiences of pre-deployment training and their thoughts on the place of culture in military simulations.