The afterlives of counterinsurgency: postcolonialism, military social science, and Afghanistan 2006-2012 by Oliver Christian Belcher M.A., The University of Kentucky, 2007 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) November 2013 © Oliver Christian Belcher, 2013 Abstract This dissertation examines the United States military’s counterinsurgency campaign in Afghanistan from 2006-2012. In recent years, the U.S. military has relied upon the methods and research of social scientists to model the Taliban-led insurgency in southern Afghanistan in hopes of predicting and mitigating the movement of the insurgency. The U.S. military has also used social scientists to gather “cultural intelligence” for surveying and interpreting the general population in Afghanistan in order to develop methods for “winning the hearts and minds” of civilians. This dissertation makes three central arguments. First, contrary to the “winning hearts and minds” narrative, counterinsurgency in practice has consistently produced two outcomes: the arming local defense forces, and massive population displacement. Second, “cultural intelligence” has been utilized to produce a narrative that Pashtuns in southern Afghanistan are “naturally” inclined towards local tribal structures as the desired mode of political order and legitimacy. Whether or not this is true, the U.S. military has used this Orientalist “local” narrative to set up place-bound tribal strongmen and warlords to counter what is perceived as a transnational, networked, and therefore locally “inauthentic” insurgency. The dissertation identifies this move by the U.S. military as the “weaponization of scale” at both a global and local level. Third, the dissertation examines the worldview that governs the U.S military’s approach to Afghanistan, and argues that it is one where populations are “de-coded” as “networks.” To see like the twenty-first century U.S. military is to see a world of networks. This world of networks is a secular cosmological vision derivative from the human-machine assemblages where U.S. military personnel and institutions are imbricated. These human-machine assemblages have been violently extended within the general Afghan population through new technologies like iris-scan biometrics devices and data-base management. The dissertation draws the important point that many new twenty-first century technologies, like “big data” mining and computational social network analysis, are rooted in colonial practices. ii Preface This thesis is original, unpublished, independent work conducted by the author, O. Belcher. The author did not collaborate with any other authors or teams in preparing this thesis, although the author has benefited greatly from the intellectual support, conversations, and solidarity with collective intellectuals all over the world, particularly in North America, Latin America, Europe, and Russia. iii Table of Contents Abstract ..................................................................................................................................................... ii Preface ...................................................................................................................................................... iii Table of Contents ..................................................................................................................................... iv List of Tables ........................................................................................................................................... vi List of Figures ......................................................................................................................................... vii Dedication ................................................................................................................................................ ix Prefatory Quotes ....................................................................................................................................... x 1 Staging the Orient: A Prologue .......................................................................................................... 1 1.1 Dead Air ..................................................................................................................................... 1 1.2 Trash Aesthetics ....................................................................................................................... 17 1.3 The Chic of Araby .................................................................................................................... 23 2 The Afterlives of Counterinsurgency ............................................................................................... 32 2.1 Introduction ................................................................................................................................ 32 2.2 What is Counterinsurgency? ..................................................................................................... 36 2.3 Methods of Counterinsurgency: Population Displacement and Territorial Militias ................. 43 2.4 Why Counterinsurgency? .......................................................................................................... 48 2.5 Conceptualizing Late-Modern Counterinsurgency ................................................................... 55 2.6 Chapters Outline ........................................................................................................................ 58 3 “Community watch with AK-47s” ................................................................................................... 66 3.1 Introduction ............................................................................................................................... 66 3.2 Going “Tribal” ........................................................................................................................... 76 3.2.1 The Security Apparatus in Afghanistan .............................................................................. 76 3.2.2 Turning to the “Tribes” ...................................................................................................... 80 3.3 What is a Tribe? ........................................................................................................................ 86 3.3.1 Tribes as Administrative Unit ............................................................................................. 86 3.3.2 Tribes as Instruments of War .............................................................................................. 92 3.4 Tribal versus Networked Insurgency ........................................................................................ 95 4 Policing the “Local” ......................................................................................................................... 99 4.1 Introduction ............................................................................................................................... 99 4.2 Complex Terrain/Disaggregated Battlespaces ........................................................................ 107 iv 4.2.1 The Conflict Environment ................................................................................................. 110 4.2.2 Regional Theaters of Operation ....................................................................................... 111 4.2.3 Complex Terrain ............................................................................................................... 114 4.2.4 Disaggregated Battlespace .............................................................................................. 117 4.3 Complex Adaptive Systems .................................................................................................... 118 4.4 The Weaponization of Scale.................................................................................................... 121 4.5 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................... 123 5 “It Takes the Villages” ................................................................................................................... 125 5.1 Refugee Machines ................................................................................................................... 125 5.2 Interlude................................................................................................................................... 132 5.3 Operation Dragon Strike: Background ..................................................................................... 136 5.4 Haussmannization in the Countryside ..................................................................................... 143 5.5 Rebuilding Orders ................................................................................................................... 152 5.5.1 Drawing Lines .................................................................................................................. 153 5.5.2 Sight-Lines ........................................................................................................................ 156 5.6 Conclusion .............................................................................................................................. 161 6 Computational Counterinsurgency