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The Afghan-Central Asia Borderland
Based on extensive, long-term fieldwork in the borderlands of Afghan and Tajik Badakhshan, this book explores the importance of local leaders and local identity groups for the stability of a state’s borders, and ultimately for the stability of the state itself. It shows how the implantation of formal institutional structures at the border, a process supported by United Nations and other international bodies, can be counterproductive in that it may marginalise local leaders and alienate the local population, thereby increasing overall instability. The study considers how, in this particular borderland where trafficking of illegal drugs, weapons and people is rampant, corrupt customs and bor...
Bridging State and Civil Society
Bridging State and Civil Society provides an in-depth study of parts of Central Asia and Afghanistan that remain marginalized from the larger region. As such, the people have developed distinct ways of governing and surviving, sometimes in spite of the state and in part because of informal organizations. Suzanne Levi-Sanchez provides eight case studies, each an independent look at a particular informal organization, but each also part of a larger picture that helps the reader understand the importance and key role that informal organizations play for civil society and the state. Each case explores how informal organizations operate and investigates their structures and interactions with official state institutions, civil society, familial networks, and development organizations. As such, each chapter explores the concepts through a different lens while asking a deceptively simple question: What is the relationship between informal organizations and the state?
Fieldwork As Craft
Provides practical guidance for security studies students and researchers conducting fieldwork, from initial research design through to publication.
All Institutionalization is Local
In my dissertation I posit a simple question: What is the importance of local leaders and local identity groups to the stability of a state's border and ultimately, the stability of the state? In order to answer this question I conducted ethnographic fieldwork in the borderlands of Afghan/Tajik Badakhshan. As part of my fieldwork, I lived with families, worked with NGOs and IGOs and studied local foundational narratives. As a framework for my analysis, I define three main concepts: borders, institutions, and identity. The interaction of these concepts with the data collected during my fieldwork led me to three main findings. First, when the state increases authority through formalization of ...
Tajikistan on the Move
The southernmost and poorest state of the Eurasian space, Tajikistan collapsed immediately upon the fall of the Soviet Union and plunged into a bloody five-year civil war (1992–1997) that left more than 50,000 people dead and more than half a million displaced. After the 1997 Peace Agreements, Tajikistan stood out for being the only post-Soviet country to recognize an Islamic party—the Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan (IRPT)—as a key actor in the civil war as well as in postwar reconstruction and democratization. Tajikistan’s linguistic and cultural proximity to Iran notwithstanding, the balance of external powers over the country remains fairly typical of Central Asia, with R...
Gender Matters in Global Politics
Fully revised and updated, this second edition of Gender Matters in Global Politics is a comprehensive textbook for advanced undergraduates studying feminism & international relations, gender and global politics and similar courses. It provides students with an accessible but in-depth account of the most significant theories, methodologies, debates and issues. This textbook is written by an international line-up of established and emerging scholars from a range of theoretical perspectives, and brings together cutting-edge feminist scholarship in a variety of issue areas. Key features and benefits of the book: Introduces students to the wide variety of feminist and gender theory and explains ...
Warlord Survival
How do warlords survive and even thrive in contexts that are explicitly set up to undermine them? How do they rise after each fall? Warlord Survival answers these questions. Drawing on hundreds of in-depth interviews in Afghanistan between 2007 and 2018, with ministers, governors, a former vice-president, warlords and their entourages, opposition leaders, diplomats, NGO workers, and local journalists and researchers, Romain Malejacq provides a full investigation of how warlords adapt and explains why weak states like Afghanistan allow it to happen. Malejacq follows the careers of four warlords in Herat, Sheberghan, and Panjshir—Ismail Khan, Abdul Rashid Dostum, Ahmad Shah Massoud, and Moha...
Kyrgyzstan - Regime Security and Foreign Policy
Kyrgyzstan is an interesting example of a relatively weak state, which for its brief period of independence has already ousted two presidents, experienced two revolutions, survived two interethnic conflicts and yet remained intact. This book explores this apparent paradox and argues that the schism between domestic and international dimensions of state and regime security is key to understanding the nature of Kyrgyz politics. The book shows how the foreign policy links to the Manas Air Base, used by the US military and essential for supplying their forces in Afghanistan, the economic arrangements necessary for sustaining the base, both inside and outside Kyrgyzstan, and the myriad of different actors involved in all this, combined to overshadow points of friction to ensure stable continuance of the status quo. Overall, the book shows how broad geopolitical forces and complex local factors together have a huge impact on the formation of Kyrgyz foreign policy.
Euro-Atlantic Discourse in Georgia
How have discourses of Euro-Atlanticism been used in domestic and international affairs by the political elite in Georgia? After the 2003 Rose Revolution, as relations with Russia soured, a Euro-Atlantic orientation portrayed as a single and coherent strategy became the cornerstone of Georgian foreign policy as well as a model for domestic reforms. This promise of a prosperous future offered new hope to the Georgian population. Scepticism or critical thinking towards President Saakashvili and his government were equated to pro-Russian treason and pro-western orientation and impressive reforms, promoted as being modelled along ’European standards’, emerged simultaneously with an outspoken...
The Decline and Fall of Republican Afghanistan
The Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan in 2021 was the result of declining active support for the government, and of waste and inefficiency in aid delivery. Yet, while corrosive, these problems were not in themselves sufficient to have brought about a collapse. To a significant degree, they were the result of early failings in institutional design, reflecting an American inclination to pursue short-term policy approaches that created perverse incentives—thus interfering with the long-term objective of stability. This book exposes the true factors underpinning Kabul’s fall. The Afghan Republic came under relentless attack from Taliban insurgents who depended critically on Pakistani support. It also suffered a creeping invasion that put the government on the back foot as the US tried and failed to deal with Pakistan’s perfidy. The fatal blow came when bored US leaders naively cut an exit deal with the enemy, fatally compromising the operation of the Afghan army and air force and triggering the final collapse, with top leaders at odds over whether to make a final stand in Kabul. The Afghan Republic did not simply decline and fall. It was betrayed.
