The international community has followed up its 2001 invasion of Afghanistan
with a complex multi-faceted peacebuilding project. However, informed observers
believe the Western-led mission in Afghanistan has failed to address the inherent
peacebuilding needs of Afghanistan and has hindered the formation of a locally
experienced sustainable peace. In response, emerging peacebuilding theory and rhetoric
has pointed to an urgent need for revised peacebuilding paradigms and strategies that
hold local (Afghan) ownership of peacebuilding activities as a central concern.
This research project utilised a qualitative grounded theory methodology to
explore perceptions of Afghan ownership of peacebuilding activities in Afghanistan.
Research data was gathered in early 2011 through face-to-face semi-structured interviews
with 63 local and international peacebuilding leaders in two Afghan urban centres. The
participants included persons from the United Nations, the Afghan and foreign
governments, local and international NGOs, a broad range of civil society groups,
international donors, and the international military forces.
Analysis of the interview narratives revealed several dilemmas on the journey
towards increased Afghan ownership of peacebuilding. First, participants believed that
the international community is performing important roles in Afghanistan, but is
struggling to ensure Afghan ownership of peacebuilding activities. Second, international
and Afghan peacebuilding actors have struggled to define who should be owning
peacebuilding in at least two respects: (1) civil society or government; and (2) traditional-
informal or democratic-formal institutions. Third, grassroots populations and Afghan
civil society felt virtually no ownership of upper-level peace processes, and described a distinct lack of locally owned grassroots-level peace process activities. And fourth,
inappropriate external forces and processes, the militarisation and politicisation of
peacebuilding activities, local aid dependency, and inadequate local control over
peacebuilding coordination have hindered the international-domestic inter-relationship in
Afghanistan.
However, the dilemmas of local ownership do not need to be viewed as
unworkable barriers but can be re-conceptualised as holding constructive potential in
designing sustainable peacebuilding solutions. To this end, this research study proposed
the creation of a locally owned, broadly participatory, and strategic dispute resolution
system that might transform international-local relations and forge the necessary space in
which the transition to local authority and ownership might occur.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:MANITOBA/oai:mspace.lib.umanitoba.ca:1993/8613 |
| Date | January 2011 |
| Creators | Thiessen, Charles D. |
| Contributors | Byrne, Sean (Peace and Conflict Studies), Haque, Emdad (Natural Resources Institute) Hudson, Mark (Sociology) Mac Ginty, Roger (University of Manchester) Wiens, John (Education) |
| Publisher | Lexington Books |
| Source Sets | University of Manitoba Canada |
| Detected Language | English |
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