Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-lnqnp Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-18T04:59:36.590Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Sex as the secret: counterinsurgency in Afghanistan

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 December 2018

Helen M. Kinsella Open the ORCID record for Helen M. Kinsella [Opens in a new window]
Helen M. Kinsella*
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA
*
*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

I explore the construction of women as the secret for the ‘successful’ prosecution of war in Afghanistan. To do so, I take up the mobilization of gender in the US counterinsurgency doctrine as deployed in Afghanistan. I draw on the 2006 Counterinsurgency Field Manual, human rights and humanitarian reports, and scholarly works to identify and analyze this mobilization, paying attention to the colonial histories upon which COIN explicitly and implicitly relies. By critically integrating these sources and the paradigmatic moments that exemplify COIN, I demonstrate the constitutive relationship of gender and COIN. The valence of the secret – of women as concealing, revealing, being, and bearing the secret – is still a lesser explored element in the analysis of the gendering of COIN and of its ‘military orientalism’. Even as scholars have powerfully shown how, in the case of Afghanistan and elsewhere, the veil functions as an overdetermined and ‘multilayered signifier’ in its own right, symbolizing the ‘tension between disclosure and concealment that defines the dominant conception of the secret’, less subject to detailed analysis in case of Afghanistan is the ways in which Afghan women are constituted through COIN in polysemous relation to the notion of the secret.

Keywords

gendercounterinsurgencysecretbiopoliticsAfghanistanwomenFoucault
Type
Original Papers
Information
International Theory , Volume 11 , Issue 1 , March 2019 , pp. 26 - 47
Copyright
© Cambridge University Press 2018 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Abirafeh, Lina. 2009. Gender and International Aid in Afghanistan. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co.Google Scholar
Ahmad, Eqbal. 2006. The Selected Writings of Eqbal Ahmad. New York: Columbia University.Google Scholar
Ansorge, Josef Teboho, and Barkawi, Tarak. 2014. “Utile Forms: Power and Knowledge in Small War.” Review of International Studies 40(1):3–24.Google Scholar
Bailliet, Cecilia M. 2007. “War in the Home: An Exposition of Protection Issues Pertaining to the Use of House Raids in Counterinsurgency Operations.” Journal of Military Ethics 6(3):173–197.Google Scholar
Baldor, Lolita. 2016. “Death Highlights Women’s Role in Special Ops Teams.” San Diego Tribune. September 03. Accessed November 15, 2018. http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/sdut-death-highlights-womens-role-in-special-ops-teams-2011oct25-story.htmlGoogle Scholar
Barkawi, Tarak, and Stanski, Keith, eds. 2013. Military Orientalism. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Barkawi, Tarak. 2016. “The Social in Thought and Practice.” Security Dialogue. 47(3):187–192.Google Scholar
Barker, Kim. 2011. The Taliban Shuffle. New York: Doubleday.Google Scholar
Basham, Victoria. 2013. War, Identity and the Liberal State: Everyday Experiences of the Geopolitical in the Armed Forces. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Benard, Cheryl, Jones, Seth G., Oliker, Olga, Thurston, Cathryn Quantic, Stearns, Brooke K., and Cordell, Kristen. 2008. Women and Nation Building. Santa Monica, CA: RAND.Google Scholar
Bell, Colleen. 2011. “Civilianising Warfare: Ways of War and Peace in Modern Counterinsurgency.” Journal of International Relations and Development 14(3):309–332.Google Scholar
Berman, Eli, and Matanock, Aila M. 2015. “The Empiricists’ Insurgency.” Annual Review of Political Science 18(2015):443–464.Google Scholar
Biltgen, Patrick, and Tomes, Robert. 2010. “Rebalancing ISR.” Geospatial Intelligence Forum 8(6):14–16.Google Scholar
Birchall, Clare. 2014. “Aesthetics of the Secret.” New Formations 83:25–46.Google Scholar
Brodsky, Anne E. 2003. With All Our Strength. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Bumiller, Elisabeth. 2010. “In Camouflage or Veil, a Fragile Bond.” The New York Times, May 29. Accessed November 15, 2018. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/30/world/asia/30marines.htmlGoogle Scholar
Butler, Judith. 2004. Precarious Life. New York: Verso.Google Scholar
Butler, Judith, and Weed, Elizabeth. 2011. The Question of Gender: Joan W. Scott’s Critical Feminism. Bloomington: Indiana UP.Google Scholar
Camiscioli, Elisa. 2013. “Women, Gender, Intimacy, and Empire.” Journal of Women’s History 25(4):138–148.Google Scholar
Campbell, Timothy, and Sitze, Adam. 2013. Biopolitics: A Reader. Durham: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Cavendish, Julia. 2011. “Al-Qa’ida Glossy Advises Women to Cover up and Marry a Martyr.” The Independent. Accessed November 15, 2018. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/al-qaida-glossy-advises-women-to-cover-up-and-marry-a-martyr-2240992.htmlGoogle Scholar
Chandrasekaran, Rajiv. 2011. “In Afghanistan, U.S. Shifts Strategy on Women’s Rights as It Eyes Wider Priorities.” The Washington Post, March 14. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/article/2011/03/05/AR2011030503668.htmlGoogle Scholar
Clinton, Hillary Rodham. 2010. “Address at the 6411st Meeting of the United Nations Security Council”. Accessed October 26.Google Scholar
Daragahi, Borzou. 2011. “Afghan Taliban Intelligence Network Embraces the New.” Los Angeles Times. Accessed April 13. http://articles.latimes.com/2011/apr/13/world/la-fg-taliban-intelligence-20110414Google Scholar
Dean, Jodi. 2002. Publicity’s Secret: How Technoculture Capitalizes on Democracy. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Dennison, Sean. 2011. “Marine Recounts Time With Female Engagement Team in Afghanistan.” January 27. Accessed November 15, 2018. http://www.mcasyuma.marines.mil/News/News-Article-Display/Article/550193/marine-recounts-time-with-female-engagement-team/Google Scholar
Derrida, Jacques. 1994. “‘To Do Justice to Freud’ The History of Madness in the Age of Psychoanalysis.” Critical Inquiry 20:227–266.Google Scholar
Derrida, Jacques, and Ferraris, Maurizio. 2001. A Taste for the Secret. Cambridge: Polity.Google Scholar
Dillon, Michael, and Reid, Julian. 2009. The Liberal Way of War: Killing to Make Life Live. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Dorronsoro, Gilles. 2011. Afghanistan: The Impossible Transition. New York: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.Google Scholar
Dyvik, Synne. 2014. “Women as ‘Practitioners’ and ‘Targets’.” International Feminist Journal of Politics 16(3):1–20.Google Scholar
Dyvik, Synne L., and Greenwood, Lauren. 2016. “Embodying Militarism: Exploring the Spaces and Bodies In-Between.” Critical Military Studies 2(1–2):1–6.Google Scholar
Eggerman, Mark, and Panter-Brick, Catherine. 2010. “Suffering, Hope, and Entrapment: Resilience and Cultural Values in Afghanistan.” Social Science & Medicine 71(1):71–83.Google Scholar
Evans, Brad. 2011. “The Liberal War Thesis.” South Atlantic Quarterly 110(3):747–756.Google Scholar
Fanon, Frantz. 1994. A Dying Colonialism. New York: Grove Press.Google Scholar
Fassin, Didier, and Pandolfi, Mariella. 2010. Contemporary States of Emergency: The Politics of Military and Humanitarian Interventions. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Zone Books.Google Scholar
Felbab-Brown, Vanda. 2014. “Afghanistan in 2013: On the Cusp…or on the Brink?” Asian Survey 54(1):165–176.Google Scholar
Feldman, Allen. 1991. Formations of Violence: The Narrative of the Body and Political Terror in Northern Ireland. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Fluri, Jennifer L. 2009. “The Beautiful ‘Other’: A Critical Examination of ‘Western’ Representations of Afghan Feminine Corporeal Modernity.” Gender, Place & Culture 16(3):241–257.Google Scholar
Fluri, Jennifer L. 2011a. “Bodies, Bombs and Barricades: Geographies of Conflict and Civilian (In) Security.” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 36(2):280–296.Google Scholar
Fluri, Jennifer L. 2011b. “Armored Peacocks and Proxy Bodies.” Gender, Place & Culture 18(4):519–536.Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel. 1986. The History of Sexuality: The Use of Pleasure. New York: Vintage.Google Scholar
Fraser, Nancy. 2013. Fortunes of Feminism:From State-managed Capitalism to Neoliberal Crisis. London: Verso.Google Scholar
Galula, David. 2006. Pacification in Algeria. Santa Monica, CA: RAND.Google Scholar
Gentile, Carmen. 2011. “Tribal Loyalties Remain Challenge for Forces in Afghanistan.” USA TODAY 8/16. Accessed November 15, 2018.Google Scholar
Gventer, Celeste Ward, et al. 2014. The New Counter-Insurgency Era in Critical Perspective. London: Palgrave.Google Scholar
Hazelton, Jacqueline. 2017. “The ‘Hearts and Minds’ Fallacy: Violence, Coercion, and Success in Counterinsurgency Warfare.” International Security 42(1):80–113.Google Scholar
Heath, Jennifer, and Zahedi, Ashraf. 2011. Land of the Unconquerable. Oakland, CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Heller-Roazen, Daniel, and Agamben, Giorgio. 1998. “Homo Sacer.” Sovereign Power and Bare Life. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Human Rights Watch. 2015. “Afghanistan: Accept Full Role for Women in Talks.” Human Rights Watch. Accessed November 15, 2018. https://www.hrw.org/news/2015/09/27/afghanistan-accept-full-role-women-talksGoogle Scholar
Human Rights Watch. 2016. “Afghanistan: Include Women in New Peace Talks.” Human Rights Watch. Accessed November 15, 2018. https://www.hrw.org/news/2016/01/04/afghanistan-include-women-new-peace-talksGoogle Scholar
Hunt, Krista, and Rygiel, Kim, eds. 2006. (En) Gendering the War on Terror: War Stories and Camouflaged Politics. Aldershot: Ashgate.Google Scholar
Hussain, Nasser. 2010. “Counterinsurgency’s Comeback.” Boston Review. Accessed November 15, 2018.Google Scholar
Jay, Martin. 2011. Essays from the Edge. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press.Google Scholar
Kandiyoti, Deniz. 2007. “Between the Hammer and the Anvil.” Third World Quarterly 28(3):503–517.Google Scholar
Karlidag, Melike. 2014. “UN Security Council Resolution 1325 in Afghanistan, Civil Society Monitoring Report.” Afghan Women’s Network.Google Scholar
Keleher, Katherine. 2011. “Female Marines Reach Out to Afghan Women During Operation.” II Marine Expeditionary Force. July 17. Accessed November 15, 2018. http://www.iimef.marines.mil/News/News-Article/Article/528921/female-marines-reach-out-to-afghan-women-during-operation/Google Scholar
Khalili, Laleh. 2010. “Gendered Practices of Counterinsurgency.” Review of International Studies 37(4):1471–1491.Google Scholar
Khalili, Laleh. 2014. “The Uses of Happiness in Counterinsurgencies.” Social Text 32:23–43.Google Scholar
Khattak, Saba Gul. 2002. “Afghan Women: Bombed to be Liberated?” Middle East Report 222:18–23.Google Scholar
Kilcullen, David. 2010. Counterinsurgency. New York: Oxford Press.Google Scholar
Kinsella, Helen. 2011. The Image Before the Weapon. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Kiszely, John. 2007. Post-Modern Challenges for Modern Warriors. The Shrivenham Papers (5) Defence Academy of the United Kingdom, Shrivenham: United Kingdom.Google Scholar
Kitch, Sally. 2014. Contested Terrain: Reflections with Afghan Women Leaders. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press.Google Scholar
Lazreg, Marnia. 2008. Torture and the Twilight of Empire. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Lemmon, Tzemach Gayle. 2011. “Afghan Women Are Not ‘Pet Rocks’.” Foreign Policy Blogs. November 21.Google Scholar
Lemmon, Tzemach Gayle. 2015. Ashley’s War: The Untold Story of a Team of Women Soldiers on the Special Ops Battlefield. New York: HarperCollins.Google Scholar
Lyall, Jason, and Wilson, Isaiah. 2009. “Rage Against the Machines: Explaining Outcomes in Counterinsurgency Wars.” International Organization 63(1):67.Google Scholar
MacDonald, Paul K. 2013. “‘Retribution Must Succeed Rebellion’: The Colonial Origins of Counterinsurgency Failure.” International Organization 67(2):253–286.Google Scholar
Manchanda, Nivi. 2015. “Queering the Pashtun: Afghan sexuality in the homo-nationalist imaginary.” Third World Quarterly 36(1):130–146.Google Scholar
Manderson, Lenore, Davis, Mark, Colwell, Chip, and Ahlin, Tanja. 2015. “On Secrecy, Disclosure, the Public, and the Private in Anthropology: An Introduction to Supplement 12.” Current Anthropology 56:183–190.Google Scholar
McBride, Keally, and Wibben, Annick T. R. 2012. “The Gendering of Counterinsurgency in Afghanistan.” Humanity 3(2):199–215.Google Scholar
McClintock, Anne. 1995. Imperial Leather: Race, Gender, and Sexuality in the Colonial Conquest. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
McSorley, Kevin, and Maltby, Sarah. 2013. “War and the Body: Cultural and Military Practices.” Journal of War & Culture Studies 5(1):3–6.Google Scholar
Mehra, Sasha. 2010. Equal Opportunity Counterinsurgency: The Importance of Afghan Women in U.S. Counterinsurgency Operations. Fort Leavenworth, Kansas: U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, MA thesis.Google Scholar
Mehta, Sunita. 2002. Women for Afghan Women. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Mikulaschek, Christoph, and Shapiro, Jacob N. 2018. “Lessons on Political Violence from America’s Post–9/11 Wars.” Journal of Conflict Resolution 62(1):174–202.Google Scholar
Moallem, Minoo. 2005. Between Warrior Brother and Veiled Sister. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Mogelson, Luke. 2011. “Bad Guys vs. Worse Guys in Afghanistan.” The New York Times. October 19. Accessed November 2018.Google Scholar
Nawa, Fariba. 2011. Opium Nation. New York: Harper Perennial.Google Scholar
Niva, Steve. 2013. “Disappearing Violence: JSOC and the Pentagon’s New Cartography of Networked Warfare.” Security Dialogue 44(3):185–202.Google Scholar
Nordberg, Jenny. 2014. The Underground Girls of Kabul. New York: Crown Publishers.Google Scholar
Osman, Wazhmah. 2014. “On Media, Social Movements, and Uprisings.” Signs 39(4):874–887.Google Scholar
Owens, Patricia. 2010. “Torture, Sex and Military Orientalism.” Third World Quarterly 31(7):1041–1056.Google Scholar
Owens, Patricia. 2015. Economy of Force: Counterinsurgency and the Historical Rise of the Social. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Parashar, Swati. 2013. “What Wars and ‘War Bodies’ Know About International Relations.” Cambridge Review of International Affairs 26(4):615–630.Google Scholar
Porch, Douglas. 2013. Counterinsurgency: Exposing the Myths of the New Way of War. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Porter, Patrick. 2009. Military Orientalism: Eastern War Through Western Eyes. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Rashid, Ahmed. 2010. Taliban. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Rid, Thomas. 2009. “Razzia: A Turning Point in Modern Strategy.” Terrorism and Political Violence 21(4):617–635.Google Scholar
Rold, Ana. 2014. “The Economics of Peace, Security, and Gender Equality.” http://www.diplomaticourier.com/news/topics/security/1192-the-economics-of-peace. Accessed November 15, 2018.Google Scholar
Ruttig, Thomas. 2011. The Battle for Afghanistan. Washington, DC: New America Foundation.Google Scholar
Scheppele, Kim Lane. 1988. Legal Secrets: Equality and Efficiency in the Common Law. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Sieff, Kevin. 2011. “Afghan Women Opposed by Former Allies.” The Washington Post, July 25. Accessed November 15, 2018.Google Scholar
Simmel, Georg. 1906. “The Sociology of Secrecy and of Secret Societies.” American Journal of Sociology 11(4):441–498.Google Scholar
Simmel, Georg, and Wolff, Kurt H. 1950. The Sociology of Georg Simmel. Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press.Google Scholar
Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. 1999. A Critique of Postcolonial Reason. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Starkey, Jerome. 2011. “Outrage at Threat to Secret Shelters Where Women Hide From Death.” Afghan Women’s Mission. February 9. Accessed November 15, 2018. http://www.afghanwomensmission.org/2011/02/outrage-at-threat-to-secret-shelters-where-women-hide-from-death/Google Scholar
Stoler, Ann Laura. 2010. Along the Archival Grain: Epistemic Anxieties and Colonial Common Sense. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Stoler, Ann Laura, and Bond, David. 2006. “Refractions Off Empire.” Radical History Review 95:93–107.Google Scholar
Taneja, Poonam. 2011. “Reaching Afghanistan’s Hidden War Widows.” BBC, February 27. Accessed November 15, 2018. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-south-asia-12558998Google Scholar
Thomas, Megan C. 2016. “Secrecy’s Use: Using Bakunin to Theorize Authority and Free Action.” Contemporary Political Theory 15(3):264–284.Google Scholar
Tocqueville, Alexis De, Bevan, Gerald E., and Kramnick, Isaac. 2003. Democracy in America. London: Penguin.Google Scholar
Trinquier, Roger. 1964. Modern Warfare. New York: Frederick Praeger.Google Scholar
The US Army, 2011. Handbook Commander’s Guide to Female Engagement Teams Version 3 Observations, Insights and Lessons. Fort Leavenworth, Kansas: Center for Army Lessons Learned.Google Scholar
Vedder, Maria. 2011. “U.S. Army Female Engagement Teams Expand: King Xerxes’ Queen Esther”. Accessed November 15, 2018. https://zeroanthropology.net/2011/01/04/recommended-isaf-guidance-for-female-engagement-teams/Google Scholar
Wahab, Saima. 2012. In My Father’s Country: An Afghan Woman Defies Her Fate. New York: Crown.Google Scholar
Yeğenoğlu, Meyda. 1998. Colonial Fantasies: Towards a Feminist Reading of Orientalism. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Young, Iris Marion. 2003. “The Logic of Masculinist Protection: Reflections on the Current Security State.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 29(1):1–25.Google Scholar
Yuval-Davis, Nira, and Anthias, Floya. 1989. Woman, Nation, State. New York: St. Martin’s.Google Scholar
Za’if, ‘Abd al-Salam. 2010. My Life with the Taliban. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Zand, Sogol. 2010. The Impact of Microfinance Programmes on Women’s Lives: A Case Study in Parwan. Kabul, Afghanistan: Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit.Google Scholar
Zoya. 2002. Zoya’s Story: An Afghan Woman’s Struggle for Freedom. New York: William Morrow.Google Scholar