Abstract Introduction: Swedish soldiers expose themselves to significant risks in international efforts, despite the risks soldiers are still motivated to participate in operations for Försvarsmakten (FM). Most often, expert assessments of risks have been formed before a specific effort that excludes the soldiers 'subjective perception of the threats and risks that may arise, this can mean that soldiers risk getting inadequate information about future risks and that training prior to intervention lacks important and central parts of the soldiers' risk assessment. Aim: The study aims to investigate risk understanding and risk perception by interviewing Swedish soldiers who have been in place in Afghanistan. Method: The study uses a case study based on the implementation of qualitative interviews. Results: When collecting data and during the analysis process, three main themes were identified with the following subcategories. Conclusion: The respondents' experience of the international effort highlights that their risk perception does not correlate with the risk understanding they had with them from home. The assignment changed the respondents' subjective risk understanding and risk perception.

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.

This dissertation examines the role of military officers as policy implementers by investigating the discretion of Swedish force commanders in the multinational military campaign in Afghanistan between 2006 and 2013. By developing an analytical framework that takes both an outside-in and an inside-out perspective, and that encompasses both the objective implications that structural factors project on force commanders as well as their subjective perceptions of those structural factors, and applying that framework to a range of official documents as well as unique interview data, the thesis describes the discretion that force commanders have had in interpreting, choosing and shaping their mission and concept of operations. The findings show that Swedish force commanders in the Afghanistan campaign have had considerable discretion in interpreting and framing the principal’s overarching mission, the mission of their own force, as well as their force’s concept of operations. Their discretion can be understood as a combination of structurally induced freedom to make choices, the force commanders’ perceptions of that freedom and their inclination to use it. Circumstances regarding structural factors such as duality of command, passive authority of superiors, non-specific tasks and ambiguous implications of allocated resources has created this discretion and rendered force commanders disproportionately influential in the policy implementation process. Although this influence can be regarded as a manifestation of modern management ideals such as Auftragstaktik and mission command in the military, or management by objectives in government and business, it can also be regarded as a downwards passing of the buck where strategic implementation decisions trickle down to the level of force commanders in the field, making them “strategic colonels”.

The aim of my thesis was to examine in how far Barack Obama was capable to realize his promises he had given to American voters during his electoral campaign. This task were completed in two time lines: Firstly, I focused on realization of his agenda during the fist year in the office. Secondly, I researched how many of the promises and how far did he manage to realize before the Midterm election changed the constitution of the Congress to his disadvantage. To provide a solid analysis, I chose to narrow the topic and concentrated on three spheres only: tax policy, health care reform and foreign policy. However, the last one mentioned was far too extensive, so I selected three main issues Obama was addressing during his campaign: the war in Afghanistan, Iraq and the detention facility in Guantanamo. During the research I examined Obama's promises and actual policies. To illustrate what Obama was getting into I also characterized the situation in the field before his presidency.

abstract: Scholars argue that masculinity and war are united because masculinity is best observed through male-dominated arenas, such as the military. Moreover, film can serve as a medium to not only establish what is socially acceptable, but play an active role in the creation of one’s identity. Filmmakers past and present have employed the motif of masculinity in their war films, which put it at the center of the social structure and creates an overall acceptable cultural ideology. These filmmakers have established the overall rules, themes, and methods used as part of the war film genre. These rules, themes, and methods served well for pre-1970 American war cinema, when women were not allowed in the military as soldiers. However, as of 2003, female soldiers have grown to comprise twenty percent of the active soldiers and officers in the military. Studies on masculinity construction are well documented in World War II, Vietnam, and Gulf War-era combat films; however, little has been studied on post-9/11 American war films involving the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Using literature on masculinity constructs, both inside and outside of film, as well as social construction theory, identity theory, genre theory, and auteur theory, this dissertation textually examines masculinity construction in six post-9/11 American war films. This dissertation finds that the contemporary war genre continues to construct masculinity similar to past eras of war film. Comradery, the warrior image, not showing emotion, having a violent demeanor, and the demonization of women and cowardice were all prevalent in one or more of the films analyzed in this study. However, there were many nontraditional masculine ideals that were implemented, such as women being present and taking an active role as soldiers, as well as women being portrayed in the warrior image. The films analyzed demonstrate that the war film genre is still depicting and therefore socially constructing masculinity in a way that was prevalent in pre-1970 war films. However, the genre is evolving and nontraditional masculinity constructs are starting to present themselves. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Journalism and Mass Communication 2019

Objectives: To describe the prevalence of sensory dysfunction (i.e. auditory, visual, vestibular, chemosensory and multiple sensory problems) and explore associations with traumatic brain injury (TBI) severity and injury mechanism among deployed Post-9/11 Veterans. Methods: This retrospective cohort analysis used Departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs diagnostic codes and administrative data. Results:Among the 570,248 Veterans in this cohort, almost 23% had at least one diagnosis of sensory dysfunction. In the multinomial regression analysis, the odds of all types of sensory dysfunction were greater among those with any TBI relative to those with no TBI. The odds for auditory or multisensory problems were higher among those that indicated exposure to blast. In particular, exposure to quaternary blast injury (e.g. crush, respiratory and burn injuries) was associated with increased odds for auditory, visual, vestibular and multisensory problems. Conclusions:Sensory problems affect a substantial number of deployed Post-9/11 Veterans and are more common among those with TBI or with exposure to deployment-related blast exposure. Because sensory problems profoundly impact quality of life, their identification and enhanced education and therapy are vital tools to improve prognosis for these relatively young Veterans.

The initial hypothesis of this dissertation was that Afghan insurgents' attacks on Afghan civilians have lowered popular confidence in the Afghan government and its institutions. The goal of the insurgents has been to convince Afghans that their local, provincial, and national governments and security forces cannot protect them. Insurgents harm and kill civilians as part of their strategy of intimidation. Conversely, counterinsurgents try to convince the Afghan people that their government is responsive, that the economy is promising, that the rule of law is strong, and that Armed Forces of Afghanistan are viable. For the counterinsurgency to have been successful, the level of national confidence would need to have been high. National confidence is intangible, often fleeting, and sometimes difficult to gauge. There are standard measurements of human development, such as economic growth; longevity; access to medicine and health clinics, levels of literacy, potable water, security, and others. However, measuring confidence presents unique challenges for the researcher. The Taliban were, by far, the most powerful and largest of the insurgent groups, but there were others. The strategy of the insurgents to break confidence in the Afghan local, provincial and national governments was based on three basic principles: crippling the economy, terrorizing their domestic enemies; and destroying the will of foreign states to continue their support for Kabul. All these tactics were predicated on violence. In this dissertation, quantitative methods associated the impact of violent incidents, which were the independent variables, to various indicators of national morale, which are the dependent variables. The results confirmed some elements of the hypothesis and disproved others. Several components of national confidence declined from 2008 and 2010, but only marginally. For the scales that were measured, there was a decline of national confidence in four scales, but an increase in one scale. There were decreases in the confidence of economic prosperity in villages and neighborhoods where citizens live, and a decline in the confidence of citizens in national and provincial governments. In security, there was a very slight decline. However, there was an increase in the confidence of citizens in institutions, organizations, and officials. The findings suggest that the overarching counterinsurgency strategy of building national confidence through sustained human development was successful in the years analyzed in this dissertation. Despite a spike in insurgent attacks during 2009, national confidence in 2010 was not significantly eroded. The author of this dissertation is a military analyst for the Department of Defense. All material in this work - its observations, conclusions, recommendations, and opinions - are those of the author and his alone. No element of this dissertation, officially or unofficially, reflects the policy of the Department of Defense or any element or agency of the United States government. / acase@tulane.edu

Doctor of Philosophy (Economics) / This dissertation asks how foreign assistance to one or both sides in a civil war affects the dynamics of the conflict. This overarching question is subsequently divided into two further questions: 1) how does foreign intervention affect the capabilities of the recipient, and 2) how does this affect the nature of the warfare. The puzzle for the first is that the impact of foreign intervention on combat effectiveness frequently varies significantly between recipients. This variation is explained by recipients’ different abilities to convert the inputs of foreign intervention into the outputs of fighting capability. The nature of the warfare in civil war will change in line with the balance of military capabilities between the belligerents. The balance of capabilities will be responsible for the form of warfare at a particular place and time whether it be conventional, irregular or guerrilla/counter-guerrilla. The argument is then illustrated with two extensive case studies, of civil wars in Angola and Afghanistan, where temporal and spatial variation in the type of warfare is shown to correlate with the type, degree, and direction of foreign intervention.

The increased violence towards humanitarian workers represents an insidious trend throughout Afghanistan. Humanitarian workers have become legitimised targets since the 2001 US led invasion of Afghanistan in Operation Enduring Freedom. The increased identification of NGOs with Western military forces and the Afghan government makes the aid community a target by association, whether it is a real or perceived association by the belligerents. Neutrality for NGOs in Afghanistan has been lost. Overwhelmingly, authors and aid practitioners make clear statements about NGOs being legitimised for violence due to the perception of complicity, propagated by either the armed forces themselves or Coalition political leaders. However, army officers involved in the civilian-military relationship are dismissive of the NGOs plight and believe the issue of NGO neutrality to be overplayed. Indeed the Coalition’s Provincial Reconstruction Teams and the NATO commander in Afghanistan believe that the lack of co-ordination or pooling of NGOs’ resources with the military or one another is an impediment to development and improving the security in Afghanistan. The Taliban have gained de facto military control over a growing number of provinces, emanating from the South with humanitarian space in that environment diminished so as to be non-existent. The civilian-military relationship is not responsible for the loss of humanitarian space in its entirety. Opium production, warlord-ism, banditry, corruption, conflict of cultures, religion, and external funding of terrorism marry to produce a uniquely hostile environment not conducive to humanitarian intervention. The lack of heterogeneity between what NGOs agree is acceptable collusion in a civilian-military context also makes it unlikely that accepted operating procedures will be adopted by the civilian humanitarian community as a whole.