This electronic thesis or dissertation has been downloaded from the King’s Research Portal at https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/ Commanders in Control Disarmament Demobilisation and Reintegration in Afghanistan under the Karzai administration Derksen, Linde Dorien Awarding institution: King's College London The copyright of this thesis rests with the author and no quotation from it or information derived from it may be published without proper acknowledgement. END USER LICENCE AGREEMENT Unless another licence is stated on the immediately following page this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International licence. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ You are free to copy, distribute and transmit the work Under the following conditions: Attribution: You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). Non Commercial: You may not use this work for commercial purposes. No Derivative Works - You may not alter, transform, or build upon this work. Any of these conditions can be waived if you receive permission from the author. Your fair dealings and other rights are in no way affected by the above. Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact [email protected] providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. Download date: 27. Sep. 2021 Commanders in Control Disarmament Demobilisation and Reintegration in Afghanistan under the Karzai administration ABSTRACT Commanders in Control examines the four internationally-funded disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration (DDR) programmes in Afghanistan between 2003 and 2014. It argues that although on paper they were part of Western powers’ ambitious state building project, in reality they served the U.S.-led military campaign against the Taliban as one of the mechanisms through which foreign support to armed groups was either given or withheld. By targeting different groups in different ways and at different times, DDR programmes were shaped by the wider political context – namely the fight against the Taliban and the movement’s continued political exclusion. By examining the programmes’ impact on individual commanders in four provinces – two in the northeast and two in the southwest – this study shows that the programmes deepened this pattern of exclusion. Local allies of international troops used them to reinforce their own position and target rivals. Those targeted often sought alternative ways of remaining armed, including by joining the insurgency. Thus, DDR – which was largely used to strengthen those winning and demobilise those losing – promoted not peace, as some foreign donors expected, but war. The main lesson from the Afghan experience is that DDR amidst war can generate instability and violence. This is especially the case when significant armed groups are excluded and portrayed as irreconcilable even when representing communities’ genuine grievances – the case in Afghanistan and other countries on the sharp end of the War on Terror like Iraq and Somalia. The state in these places is too weak to permanently exclude large groups, even with international military support. This means that to gain more control over the use of force – which is usually the objective of DDR – it must find a way to accommodate, not exclude, the main militarised patronage networks. In Afghanistan this means including the Taliban. © Linde Dorien Derksen 2017 1 Doctoral Thesis War Studies Department, King’s College London September 2016 Linde Dorien (Deedee) Derksen KCL Candidate Number: 0946805 Supervisors: Prof Anatol Lieven; Prof Theo Farrell © Linde Dorien Derksen 2017 2 © Linde Dorien Derksen 2017 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this thesis may be made without permission of the author. No portion of this thesis may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with the author’s permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6-10 Kirby Street, London, EC1N 8TS. Any person or organisation who does any unauthorised act in relation to this thesis may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. © Linde Dorien Derksen 2017 3 In memory of Haji Habibullah © Linde Dorien Derksen 2017 4 Table of Contents Acknowledgment ................................................................................................................. 7 Chapter 1 Introduction ...................................................................................................... 8 1.1. State building: proponents and critics ....................................................................... 12 1.1.1. History of state building and DDR concepts ..................................................................... 14 1.1.2. Critics of state building ............................................................................................................. 18 1.1.3. State building as a framework of analysis .......................................................................... 27 1.2. Reconceptualising the international intervention part 1 ........................................... 29 1.2.1. Historically weak state .............................................................................................................. 29 1.2.2. Long history of reintegrating former combatants ............................................................ 42 1.2.3. Military campaign against the Taliban and their political exclusion ....................... 46 1.3. Reconceptualising the international intervention part 2 ........................................... 51 1.3.1. Points of departure ..................................................................................................................... 51 1.3.2. State builders or spoilers? A hypothesis ............................................................................. 53 1.4. Methodology ........................................................................................................................ 57 1.4.1. Sources, structure and focus ................................................................................................... 57 1.4.2. Researching in Afghanistan ..................................................................................................... 59 Chapter 2 Demobilising Friends: DDR and DIAG ................................................... 67 2.1. Disarmament, Demobilisation and Reintegration (DDR) .......................................... 67 2.2. Disbanding Illegal Armed Groups (DIAG) ................................................................... 89 Chapter 3 Demobilising Enemies: PTS and APRP ................................................. 104 3.1. Programme Tahkim Sulh (PTS) ................................................................................... 104 3.2. Afghanistan Peace and Reintegration Programme (APRP) .................................. 120 Chapter 4 DDR in the Northeast: Kunduz and Baghlan ....................................... 140 4.1. Background to post-2001 conflict dynamics .............................................................. 140 4.1.1. Pre-2001 ..................................................................................................................................... 140 4.1.2. Post-2001 .................................................................................................................................... 144 4.2. Kunduz Province ............................................................................................................. 147 4.2.1. DDR and DIAG – the case of Mir Alam ......................................................................... 147 4.2.2. The APRP ................................................................................................................................... 159 4.3. Baghlan Province ............................................................................................................. 163 4.3.1. DDR and DIAG – the case of Amir Gul ........................................................................... 163 4.3.2. The APRP ................................................................................................................................... 170 4.4. DDR deepens political exclusion in the northeast .................................................... 177 Chapter 5 DDR in the Southwest: Uruzgan and Helmand ................................... 180 5.1. Background to post-2001 conflict dynamics .............................................................. 180 5.1.1. Pre-2001 ..................................................................................................................................... 180 5.1.2. Post-2001 .................................................................................................................................... 183 5.2. Uruzgan Province ............................................................................................................ 185 5.2.1. DDR – the case of Jan Mohammad and Matiullah ...................................................... 185