DEVELOPMENT AND SECURITY IN AFGHANISTAN, 1946-2014 by WESLEY LLEWELLYN ...

321 Pages·2017·4.08 MB·English

“WE’RE NOT COUNTERINSURGENTS”: DEVELOPMENT AND SECURITY IN
AFGHANISTAN, 1946-2014

by

WESLEY LLEWELLYN ATTEWELL

B.A., The University of British Columbia, 2007
M.A., The University of British Columbia, 2009

A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT
OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

in

THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE AND POSTDOCTORAL STUDIES

(Geography)

THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA

(Vancouver)

January 2017

© Wesley Llewellyn Attewell, 2017
Abstract

It is not possible to understand international development in isolation from the geographies of
military, political, and capitalist violence. In particular, it is necessary to analyze the
interconnections between development and security: the development-security nexus. In order to
illuminate the role that development plays in the West’s historical and ongoing efforts to pacify
insurgent populations, it is important to interrogate the assemblages of actors, knowledge, and power
that enliven diagnostic moments of counterinsurgency warfare.

More specifically, the dissertation explores the ways in which the United States Agency for
International Development (USAID) has, from the Cold War onwards, practiced development as an
ostensibly humanitarian form of counterinsurgency warfare in Afghanistan. It shows how USAID,
for most of its institutional history, has been forced to grapple with Afghanistan as an ongoing – and
seemingly insurmountable – problem of development-security. Three case studies – the Helmand
Valley Project (1946-1978), the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan (1980-1992), and the ongoing
assault on the Afghan narco-economy (2001-present) – reveal the shifting contours of development-
as-counterinsurgency praxis in relation to broader institutional, political-economic, and geo-strategic
contexts.

These allow three substantive claims to be advanced. First, USAID has historically championed
increasingly “total” forms of rural development as the key to transforming populations of potential
insurgents into “governable subjects”. Second, these “total” forms of development practice are
fundamentally geographical in the sense that they strive to pacify insurgent populations through the
production of spaces that are meant to “model” new forms of modern and liberal life. These new
spaces served as laboratories in which development professionals forged new counterinsurgency
techniques, put them to the test, and subsequently, evaluated their utility. Third, while these
development practices are represented by USAID as productive, humanitarian, and therapeutic, they
are nonetheless undergirded by – and provide a legitimating armature for – techniques of population
management that are destructive of life, such as kill-capture operations and crop eradication
schemes.

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Preface

This dissertation is an original intellectual product of the author, Wesley Llewellyn Attewell. UBC
Research Ethics Board certificate number H13-00884 covered the interviews reported in these pages.

With the exception of Figures 13, 14, 15, and 16, all images and maps used in this dissertation were
sourced from US government documents, and hence, are public domain. Figures 13, 14, 15, and 16
are reproductions of maps originally published by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.
They were reproduced by Eric Leinberger, a cartographer working for the UBC Department of
Geography.

The work presented in this dissertation led to the following publications:

Attewell, Wesley. “‘The planet that rules our destiny’: Alternative development in occupied
Afghanistan”. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space. Advance online publication.
DOI: 10.1177/0263775816664100.
Attewell, Wesley. 2015. “Ghosts in the delta: USAID and the historical geographies of Vietnam’s
‘other’ war”. Environment and Planning A. 47.11: 2257-2275. Work appears in Chapter 1.
Attewell, Wesley. 2012. “‘I hope he dies’: On WikiLeaks as a threat to human life’. In: Springer,
Simon, et al. “Leaky Geopolitics: The Ruptures and Transgressions of WikiLeaks”.
Geopolitics. 17.3: 681-711. Work appears in Chapters 1, 4 and 5.

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Table of Contents

Abstract ............................................................................................................................................................... ii
Preface ............................................................................................................................................................... iii
Table of Contents ............................................................................................................................................... iv
List of Figures .................................................................................................................................................... vi
List of Abbreviations ........................................................................................................................................ vii
Acknowledgements .......................................................................................................................................... viii
Dedication ............................................................................................................................................................ x
1 “Nothing will ever be the same again…” .................................................................................................... 1
1.1 Slouching towards irrelevance ............................................................................................................. 1
1.2 Playing the “Great Game”.................................................................................................................... 7
1.3 USAID and the national security state ............................................................................................... 21
1.4 USAID as governmentality ................................................................................................................ 33
1.5 USAID and the geographies of uneven development ........................................................................ 41
1.6 The USAID complex ......................................................................................................................... 45
1.7 Outline................................................................................................................................................ 53
2 “Exploding out into the open…” ............................................................................................................... 56
2.1 The happiest of times ........................................................................................................................ 56
2.2 The HVP as machine ......................................................................................................................... 63
2.3 “Time and science are changing the world” ...................................................................................... 68
2.4 The geopolitical-economies of competitive coexistence ................................................................... 72
2.5 “We have American advisors running out of our ears” ..................................................................... 79
2.6 Total development ............................................................................................................................. 84
2.7 Bulldozers and rifles .......................................................................................................................... 90
2.8 The unfinished symphony .................................................................................................................. 98
2.9 Change comes to the Valley............................................................................................................. 103
3 “We cannot back off now” ....................................................................................................................... 105
3.1 Development as insurgency ............................................................................................................. 105
3.2 Ghosts in the borderlands ................................................................................................................. 108
3.3 Learning from Mao .......................................................................................................................... 114
3.4 “Katarah, katarah, dareah meshah” .................................................................................................. 122
3.5 Natural neoliberals? ......................................................................................................................... 130
3.6 Anger and mercy .............................................................................................................................. 141
3.7 Abandoning Afghanistan ................................................................................................................. 150
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4 “The star that took us from our homes” ................................................................................................... 154
4.1 “A dangerous weapon” .................................................................................................................... 154
4.2 “More dangerous than terrorism” .................................................................................................... 160
4.3 “The real deal” ................................................................................................................................. 170
4.4 Shape, clear, hold, eradicate, build .................................................................................................. 184
4.5 Making the desert bloom, again ....................................................................................................... 203
4.6 Making peace with poppies.............................................................................................................. 210
5 “The planet that rules our destiny” .......................................................................................................... 214
5.1 Growing hope ................................................................................................................................... 214
5.2 The biopolitics of alternative development ...................................................................................... 217
5.3 “The Pride of the Eastern Region” ................................................................................................... 221
5.4 “We’re here to help, not for the money” .......................................................................................... 232
5.5 Letting die in eastern Afghanistan ................................................................................................... 241
5.6 “All ends with beginnings” .............................................................................................................. 252
5.7 From poppy free to poppy paradise ................................................................................................. 257
6 Things fall apart ....................................................................................................................................... 261
6.1 “$7.6 billion and counting” .............................................................................................................. 261
6.2 Dis-assembling the development-security nexus ............................................................................. 269
6.3 “From the American people” ........................................................................................................... 276
Bibliography .................................................................................................................................................... 279

v
List of Figures

Figure 1: Program, "Fourth of July Celebration" ................................................................................ 57
Figure 2: Map of the Helmand Valley Watersheds ............................................................................ 61
Figure 3: "Development program under Export-Import Bank loans"................................................. 75
Figure 4: Robert Snyder discusses plowing methods in the Logar Valley ......................................... 81
Figure 5: A typical village distribution system ................................................................................... 91
Figure 6: Muhammadin's land, North Shamalan ................................................................................ 92
Figure 7: Drains in the Marja project area ........................................................................................ 101
Figure 8: Major Cross Border Routes).............................................................................................. 116
Figure 9: Components of the Afghanistan commodity program ...................................................... 119
Figure 10: Map showing the locations of existing and future ADSs ................................................ 126
Figure 11: Sketch map of bazaar ...................................................................................................... 139
Figure 12: Poppy cultivation areas in Afghaistan ............................................................................. 144
Figure 13: Afghanistan poppy cultivation in 2001 ........................................................................... 164
Figure 14: Poppy cultivation in Afghanistan, 2004 .......................................................................... 165
Figure 15: Opium production in Afghanistan by province (mt), 2007 ............................................. 185
Figure 16: Security map and poppy cultivation change by province, 2006-2007 ............................ 185
Figure 17: Map of Alternative Livelihoods Program – Eastern Region ........................................... 222
Figure 18: IDEA-NEW’s area of operations .................................................................................... 233
Figure 19: Demonstration farm locations in the eastern region ........................................................ 237
Figure 20: Map of IDEA-NEW value chains as of September 2012 ................................................ 239

vi
List of Abbreviations

AD(L)P/E Alternative Development/Livelihoods Program - East
AD(L)P/S Alternative Development/Livelihoods Program - South
ADS Agricultural Development Scheme
ADT Agricultural Development Training
ASSP The Agriculture Sector Support Program
AVIPA Afghanistan Vouchers for Increased Production in Agriculture
BINL The Bureau of International Narcotics and Law-Enforcement
CAS Commercial Agricultural Sales
CBHAP The Cross Border Humanitarian Assistance Program
CEP The Commodity Export Program
CHDP The Central Helmand Drainage Project
CJITF Combined Joint Interagency Task Force
CPEF Central Poppy Eradication Force
DAI Development Alternatives, Inc.
DEA The Drug Enforcement Administration
FOA The Foreign Operations Administration
GLE Governor Led Eradication
H(A)VA The Helmand (Arghandab) Valley Authority
HVAS The Helmand Valley Advisory Service
HVP The Helmand Valley Project
IDEA-NEW Incentives Driving Economic Alternatives – North, East, and West
ICA The International Cooperation Administration
IOCC Interagency Operations and Coordination CEntre
JPEL Joint Prioritized Effects List
NACP The Narcotics Awareness and Control Project
O/AID/REP Office of the Aid Representative for Afghanistan Affairs
PPA Program, Planning, and Analysis
PREU Poppy Reduction and Elimination Unit
PRT Provincial Reconstruction Team
PVO Private Voluntary Organization
RADP Regional Agricultural Development Programs
SLDP The Shamalan Land Development Project
TCA The Technical Cooperation Administration
TIMER Technology Innovations for Market-led Economic Rehabilitation
UNDP The United Nations Development Program
UNODC The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime
UNTAM The United Nations Technical Assistant Mission
USAID The United States Agency for International Development
USAID/Afghanistan The USAID mission to Afghanistan
USOM The United States Operation Mission
VITA Volunteers in Technical Assistance

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Acknowledgements

It would not have been possible for me to write this PhD dissertation without the support of a
number of extraordinary people, whose time and effort shaped its content in some way, shape, or
form.

Thank you to the group of current and former graduate students (in the Department of Geography at
UBC unless otherwise noted) who have made my PhD such a wonderful experience. In no particular
order, May Farrales, Jeff Whyte, Craig Jones, Paige Patchin, Rosemary Collard, Richard Nisa
(Rutgers), Tom Howard, Sophie Webber, Andrew Shmuely, Jamie Doucette, Carolyn Prouse, Sarah
Brown, Jessica Hallenbeck, Pablo Mendez, Michael Smith, Dawn Hoogeveen, Jon Luedee, Max
Ritts, Sarah Przedpelska, Liz Lee, Oliver Belcher, Sara Koopman, and Justin Tse have all been
especially valued friends and colleagues.

I have been fortunate to engage with three dedicated and engaged committee members in the
Department of Geography at UBC. Throughout graduate school, Jim Glassman has consistently
served as a fountain wisdom on everything from teaching to writing. Trevor Barnes’ wonderful
critical insights have played such a crucial role in helping me find my own voice as a radical human
geographer. And finally, I owe an incredibly large debt to my supervisor of over ten years, Derek
Gregory. Through his tireless and enthusiastic support, Derek has always encouraged me to push the
boundaries of my own research and intellectual growth. Brilliant and dependable, Derek models the
kinds of research and teaching practices to which I aspire. It is an honour to have worked with these
three people whom I trust and respect so much. I am looking forward to a lifetime of intellectual
collaboration, of friendship, and of meetings at Cardero’s.

During my PhD candidacy, I am thankful to have met with a number of more senior geographers
who have generously supported me and patiently entertained my questions. Again, in no particular
order: Jo Sharp, Simon Reid-Henry, James Sidaway, Matthew Sparke, Steve Graham, and Laleh
Khalili. And I am enormously grateful to Deb Cowen, Matt Farish, and Emily Gilbert for helping me
find a post-graduate home at the University of Toronto.

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I also wish to thank my parents, who have supported me through my many years of education, both
morally and financially, and my sister, for grudgingly reading over all of my term assignments for
the past seven years.

The following institutions have provided financial assistance: the Liu Institute for Global Issues, the
Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (the Canada Graduate Scholarship
program), the Faculty of Graduate Studies at UBC, and UBC’s Department of Geography.

Finally, I wish to extend a very special thanks to Lisa. Your love and emotional support kept me
going through the final years of the doctoral program. You played a huge role in my development
and growth, both as a scholar and as a human being. When things got tough, you kept me focused
and grounded; and when things were going well, you encouraged me to push myself and strive for
more. I would not be where and who I am today without you, and for this, I am forever grateful. As
my constant inspiration, as my teacher, as my best friend, and as the love of my life, you have shown
me the world.

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Dedication

To Lisa and Cowboy.

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