Securitization and counter-securitization in Afghanistan

Abstract

This article confronts securitization theory with the war in Afghanistan and thus explores questions and dynamics of securitization in a specific communicative situation of military combat. The confrontation highlights not only less well researched questions of implementation, resistance, legitimacy and difficulties of establishing authority in securitizations, but it also inspires a conceptualization of counter-securitization within the theory. In Afghanistan sovereign power to control and realize a securitization at the implementation stage was significantly fragmented so that processes of securitization became more iterative and interactive, and acts of acceptance versus resistance with regard to securitizing moves were more complex than traditionally assumed by the theory. Reflecting on securitization theory, the article thus explores the case of Afghanistan through a conceptualization of its dynamics as a prolonged political game of moves and counter-moves marked by securitizing and counter-securitizing speech acts in which the communicative situation of war becomes visible as a process of strategic interactions in continuous sequences of action and reaction.