Newton, Allen Alexander (2013) Anti-insurgency narratives : territory, locality and the organisation of non-state military formations in Iraq and Afghanistan. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

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Abstract

This Doctoral dissertation investigates non-state military formations. Kilcullen’s notion of
‘Hearts and Minds’, which suggests that through engagement and diplomacy, populations can
be persuaded to believe that an enhanced military will protect them, tends to lack capacity to
recognize the population as identifying their own role in the conflict. The core problem is that
discussions about engagement regularly remain meta-theoretical, a tool of soft-power at most
and based on theories of hegemonic narratives and ‘cultural awareness’, and have had
arguably little effect on mapping different armed-campaigns in an insurgency. This doctoral
research project seeks to analyse the operative elements of narrative that ultimately allow for
communities to mobilise for an armed anti-insurgency movement and, more importantly,
permit community militias to provide for their own security and governance, as well as strive
to deny the territory and human capital to the insurgents. Hence, this investigation takes the
notion of security, counter-insurgency and anti-insurgency as a sociospatial phenomenon than
solely an ideological issue. Accordingly, this research revisits anthropological and
sociological data with the aim of demonstrating that non-state military formations have
fundamental political context and military preferences than determined by culture or solely
military objectives. More specifically, it advocates that ethnography is the way forward to
map the societies in conflict, arguing that collective action will develop even in the absence
of assistance from a superior military.
This dissertation takes care not to make an anthropological comparison of the Afghan
and Iraqi insurgencies, but rather a political comparison. Local concepts and vocabularies are
used, with supplementary presentations which map the sociospatial range which come to
define the conflict and security. Local concepts and vocabularies provide background
information on points in the anti-insurgency campaign, discussion of actors involved and
information on specific context addressed. Each chapter in the dissertation contains very
specific problematised issues which narrow the conditions of each case study, but adds to the
overall understanding of non-state military formations. The set and study are designed to
bring a parallel understanding to counter-insurgency engagement strategy that emphasise the
local social structures over weak, centralised security structure.

Item Type:	Thesis (PhD)
Subjects:	J Political Science > JC Political theory U Military Science > U Military Science (General)
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH):	Insurgency -- Afghanistan, Insurgency -- Iraq, Non-state actors (International relations) -- Afghanistan, Non-state actors (International relations) -- Iraq, Counterinsurgency -- Afghanistan, Counterinsurgency -- Iraq, Participant observation
Official Date:	March 2013
Dates:	Date Event March 2013 Submitted
Institution:	University of Warwick
Theses Department:	Department of Politics and International Studies
Thesis Type:	PhD
Publication Status:	Unpublished
Supervisor(s)/Advisor:	Aldrich, Richard J. (Richard James), 1961-
Extent:	328 leaves : charts, maps.
Language:	eng

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