Local peace and contemporary conflict: Constructing commonality and exclusion during war in Afghanistan

Social Science Research xxx (2016) 1e23

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Social Science Research journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ssresearch

Local peace and contemporary conflict: Constructing commonality and exclusion during war in Afghanistan Daniel Karell Division of Social Science, New York University Abu Dhabi, PO Box 129188, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

a r t i c l e i n f o

a b s t r a c t

Article history: Received 30 June 2015 Received in revised form 2 May 2016 Accepted 11 July 2016 Available online xxx

Despite the “local turn” in international peacekeeping and the emphasis on communitycentered development during the recent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, it remains poorly understood how local actorsdboth foreign and indigenousdshape local-level wartime settings. This article explores the processes and consequences of one military unit's efforts to “win hearts and minds” in Afghanistan during 2012e13. The first portion of the analysis examines original textual data with a novel methodological approach depicting the unit's perceptions of commonalities between itself and local actors. The second portion explores the consequences with data from original interviews with residents of southern Afghanistan in 2014e15. The findings suggest that achieving a local peace can be undermined by military and development actors' own perception of the local community. The article concludes with a discussion of how sociological studies of micro-settings between actors can contribute to research on conflict and wartime development, as well as how the sociological study of war can further develop by disaggregating conflict settings and tracing the social construction of wartime socio-political landscapes. © 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Keywords: War Development Local-level Textual analysis Afghanistan

1. Introduction As insurgent violence increased during the recent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the United States (US) and its allies € adopted strategies based on the “local turn” in wartime development and peacekeeping (Lake, 2010; Ozerdem and Lee, 2015). Chief among these was an emphasis on aid and development projects addressing the needs of local-level communitiesdpopularly known as “winning hearts and minds”dideally implemented in collaboration with local leaders (Fishstein and Wilder, 2012). In addition, this “hearts and minds” mission was to be carried out by novel warmaking instruments. The most well-known were Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs). Established soon after the onset of the wars to support sub-national governance, PRTs came to be considered as one of the primary reconstruction and development actors at the provincial and local-level in Afghanistan and Iraq as security deteriorated and international organizations, including the UN, scaled back their programs for rural local communities in the mid-2000s (DOD, 2009; Horne, 2012). A growing body of research has focused on this strategic shift by Western militaries in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as on peacekeeping's local turn, more broadly. Much of this literature, however, has adopted a narrow scope of inquiry while also facing conceptual and data obstacles. Namely, research typically aims to evaluate the hearts and minds mission, asking whether wartime aid increases security. Yet it does so without a clear conceptualization of which local actors constitute “the local,” and often without individual and local-level data on how incumbentsdforeign militaries and the allied central

E-mail address: [email protected]. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ssresearch.2016.07.002 0049-089X/© 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Please cite this article in press as: Karell, D., Local peace and contemporary conflict: Constructing commonality and exclusion during war in Afghanistan, Social Science Research (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ssresearch.2016.07.002

2

D. Karell / Social Science Research xxx (2016) 1e23

governmentdinteract with locals. As a result, the local populace is frequently cast as monolithic and possible variation in types of interactions over time are overlooked. We are thus left with little insight into how, when, and with whom the locallybased process of winningdand losingdhearts and minds unfolds. In contrast to much of the existing research on contemporary conflict, this study explores the how, when, and who of winning hearts and minds by drawing on the sociological tradition of focusing on interactive, relational, and unintended processes (Merton, 1936; Goffman, 1959; Portes, 2000; Kestnbaum, 2005). In doing so, it considers the social processes and consequences of tasking military units with being concurrently soldiers, development actors, and nation builders. In addition, it advances a much-needed sociological perspective on contemporary conflict, and particularly on the development efforts that occur during such conflicts. Indeed, the following analysis suggests that approaches developed in micro-interactional and relational sociology can be usefully applied to shed light on the socio-political dynamics of conflict and enrich the sociology of war. To explore the how, when, and with whom of local-level wartime development, I conduct a case study of a PRT in one Afghan province in 2012e13. The case study draws on original data, weekly PRT text reports and interviews with residents of southern Afghanistan, and employs a novel analytical approach. Specifically, the textual data are analyzed with a measure of response equivalencedhow similarly actors perceive their own responses to given events relative to other actorsdto specify actors' shared understandings of events over time. As a result, the analysis systematically compares the interactional and relational dynamics that affect how the PRT “sees” its hearts and mind efforts wax and wane. Insights into the consequences of these perceived commonalities are then derived from the interview data. In brief, I find that local-level efforts to establish peace can be undermined by how external actors and local residents perceive whether their understandings of mutually-experienced events are similar. Namely, the extent to which understandings are shared among actors impose inadvertent, unseen constraints upon the distribution of development aid and engender feelings of exclusion among portions of the community. This exploration of the construction and consequences of wartime social worlds, while unique in the contemporary study of conflict and post-conflict development, provides crucial insight into why hearts may or may not be won at different points in time. More broadly, it is such investigation of local social worlds that emerge during war that offers a significant opportunity for sociologists to make influential contributions to conflict, post-conflict, and peace studies. Moreover, it charts a path for developing the sociology of war and conflict: while the literature has been typically focused on macro-historical processes, the adoption of micro-level interactional and relational frameworks can expand its analytical scope and empirical findings. The paper is structured as follows. First, I review the existing research on the local turn in contemporary conflict and postconflict contexts, particularly the US-led war in Afghanistan. Following this, I introduce the theoretical framework of the paper and three expectations used to guide the analysis and interpretation of findings. I then identify the case selection, present the data, and explain the textual and interview methodologies. This is followed by analysis of first, textual data, and, second, interview data. I end with a discussion of the findings and their implications for efforts to win hearts and minds, as well as for social scientific research on contemporary conflict and post-conflict settings. In this section I also emphasize how sociologists can provide much needed contributions to the study of conflict and wartime development, underscoring recent calls for advancement in the sociological study of war (Wimmer, 2014). 2. The local turn in contemporary war Incumbents' wartime development efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq were part of a broader local turn in international peacekeeping and state-building. This approach rests on the assumption that indigenous populations know better what they need and how these needs can be satisfied. Practically, it calls for locally-oriented aid and greater inclusion of local actors in the planning and implementation of incumbent operations (Suhrke, 2007; Richmond, 2014). In the case of the militarized “hearts and minds” campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq, US and NATO soldiersdoften attached to PRTsdwere tasked with providing services and development projects that fit local needs, in consultation with community leaders and with the assistance of local vendors (USFOR-Afghanistan, 2009; Lake, 2010; Malkasian, 2013). The US Army counterinsurgency manual (2006, A-26), for example, describes winning hearts and minds as building community-level “trusted networks.” It explains: [T]he true meaning of the phrase “hearts and minds” … comprises two separate components. “Hearts” means persuading people that their best interests are served by COIN [counterinsurgency] success. “Minds” means convincing them that the force can protect them and that resisting it is pointless. … Over time, successful trusted networks grow like roots into the populace. The manual goes on to describe “trusted networks” as inclusive of “local allies, community leaders, and local security forces,” and based on the military unit's “common interests” with such actors (2006, A-27 and A-28). The prominence of the local turn in contemporary international peacekeeping and state-building policies, as well as in the wartime strategy of Western militaries, has resulted in a rapidly growing body of cross-disciplinary research focusing on its application and efficacy. Yet this literature frequently encounters challenges to studying “the local” and, relatedly, produces mixed findings. In the policy-oriented literature, it has been unclear which of the numerous indigenous actors can be considered “local,” which aspects of the peacekeeping and state-building processes should be “owned” by locals, and how € external and local actors (should) interact (Ozerdem and Lee, 2015; Shinoda, 2015). For example, Fishstein and Wilder (2012) show how a lack of clarity over which local actors and communities should receive aid resulted in community divisions and Please cite this article in press as: Karell, D., Local peace and contemporary conflict: Constructing commonality and exclusion during war in Afghanistan, Social Science Research (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ssresearch.2016.07.002

D. Karell / Social Science Research xxx (2016) 1e23

3

inter-community tensions resulting from foreign actors engaging a subset of locals and communities, rather than the broader population of residents. Similarly, Theissen (2015) demonstrates how the policy of increasing the local ownership of peace negotiations in Afghanistan generated conflict between differing notions of justice held by national elites and grassroots civil activists. In the academy-oriented researchdoften focused on evaluating the pacifying effects of recent hearts and minds campaignsdthe local turn has produced a mismatch between theory, data, and analysis. Namely, theories of how such campaigns unfold must operate at the individual and local-levels, but data collection and analyses are often only feasible at aggregated spatio-temporal units. For example, if researchers assume that hearts and minds are won by economic opportunitydthat is, if potential insurgents refrain from rebellion because wartime development aid results in a licit labor market offering superior benefits (Collier and Hoeffler, 2004)dthen analysis should use data capturing individual choices and behaviors. Similarly, if winning hearts and minds means that a government and its allies deliver public goods to communities whose members in turn provide intelligence (Berman and Matanock, 2015), then analyses should draw on data on the sentiments of community members and their collaboration with incumbents. Unfortunately, in both cases, the required data is difficult to acquire and rarely used. The resulting mismatch between theory and empirics plays a role in the literature's mixed findings: some studies report that local aid projects decrease insurgent violence, others find no effect, and yet other studies show an increase in €hnke and Zürcher, 2013; Child, 2014; Crost et al., 2014; Adams, 2015). violence (Berman et al., 2011, 2013; Chou, 2012; Bo In summary, better understanding the dynamics and consequences of contemporary wartime development and peacekeeping requires an approach that conceptualizes and analyzes, first, the various local actors and social structures in a given context and, second, how these actors interact over timeda process that reshapes the local social structure and perhaps the actors' self-identification and participation in political violence (Gould, 1996, 2003; Kalyvas, 2006; Schetter, 2013). Thus, developing a systematic approach to studying contemporary conflict settingsdand, specifically, the hearts and minds efforts of Western militariesdrelies on analyzing the perceptions that local actors have of one another and the consequences of these impressions. With this in mind, I devote the remainder of this paper to begin developing such an approach. I being by specifying the theoretical framework and expectations in the following section. 3. Theoretical framework and expectations The local-level setting, prioritized by contemporary approaches to war, should be understood as a space where local actors manage and contest how they are seen and regarded by others over time (Goffman, 1959). From the constellations of these perceptions, we can infer, explain, and assess consequences of warmaking. Indeed, ethnographic accounts from contemporary Afghan communities describe actors basing decisions and behavior on situationally dependent, interaction-based impressions (Coburn, 2011; Azoy, 2013; Martin, 2014; Karell, 2015). Building on these insights, a general framework would suggest that the processual creation of impressions in local wartime contexts has the potential to generate loyalties and allegiancesdbut also run the risk of imposing constraints on collaboration and peace-building. For example, the local actors with whom Western forces perceive shared interests and goals are more likely to be fit into their “trusted network,” thereby influencing the distribution of aid, future interactions, and long-term support. The aim of the following analysis is thus to trace how actors' views of others are constructed in a conflict setting; how these views can constrain the peace-building process; and, finally, the consequences of such constraints. First, I examine how one American PRT viewed their local “trusted network” during their deployment. Because we know that the views actors have of one anotherdand seek to induce in one anotherdare situationally dependent, the PRT's perceptions of their own similarity to local Afghan actors will change as the situation changes. However, these changes are bounded. For example, the PRT is likely to present itself to local government officials as being similar to them. This could be because of various reasons: the PRT is compelled to signal to its military and political superiors that it is engaging formal and informal local governance or the PRT finds it less costly to interact with these notables because they are easily identifiable and hold familiar social positions. Similarly, the PRT may be less likely to foster commonality with informal local community leaders, such as tribal elders and mullahs, because presenting this type of similarity to its superiors is not rewarded or because presenting itself as similar to such culturally unfamiliar actors is more costly (Goffman, 1959, 1961). Thus, in the PRT's surrounding world, interaction-based impressions will vary across time and actors. Put in the terms of the US military's own conceptualization of trusted partnerships as resting on “common interests” (DOA, 2006), only some locals will fit into the unit's attempts to cultivate a “trusted network.” Specifically, the expectation is that the PRT's view of local actors will change as circumstances change, but similarity with actors in formal roles will consistently remain relatively higher than with actors in informal roles. To examine this possible variation I introduce a novel measure of commonality, response equivalence. Capturing the extent to which the PRT views itself and other actors as sharing norms of behavior and reactions to mutually experienced events, that response equivalence provides a standardized measure of situationally-dependent relative impressions amongst a set of actors. In the second step of the analysis, I explore the consequences of the changing and differential local-level perceptions. The expectation is that because the PRT's trusted network is likely to include only a subset of local Afghans, constraints will be placed on who benefits from hearts and minds campaigns. Specifically, those actors who are perceived as having greater similarity with the PRT will have enjoyed disproportional benefits compared to those who are perceived as being less similar. Guided by these expectations, the following analysis draws on two types of data and methodologies. The first step applies the response equivalence index to textual data recording the activities and assessments of an American-led PRT to analyze the Please cite this article in press as: Karell, D., Local peace and contemporary conflict: Constructing commonality and exclusion during war in Afghanistan, Social Science Research (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ssresearch.2016.07.002

4

D. Karell / Social Science Research xxx (2016) 1e23 Table 1 Zabul province relative to other Afghan provinces, 2012. Zabul

Mean of all provinces

Population

289,300

Size (sq km)

17,343

Total external financial assistance (millions, USD)

19.22

573,212 (366,495) 18,995 (16,524) 26.61a (16.83)

a Means and standard deviations exclude the outliers of Kabul, Helmand, and Kandahar. These provinces received $252.47, $171.52, and $181.25 million in foreign aid, respectively. Note: Standard deviations in parentheses Sources: Islamic Republic of Afghanistan Central Statistics Office; Islamic Republic of Afghanistan Ministry of Finance.

nature of the PRTs “trusted network” over time. The second step uses original data from interviews with residents of southern Afghanistan to explore the consequences of local-level interactional understandings during hearts and minds campaigns. In the following sections, I discuss the data and methods of each step in turn. 4. Data and methods: local-level commonality To systematically analyze local-level dynamics during wartime development and peace-making missions, I first examine the “trusted network” of a PRT unit throughout its deployment in southern Afghanistan. A trusted network is an admittedly vague notion with distinct challenges for data collection and analysis. For instance, if a researcher adopts the US Army's definition of trusted networks as relationships based on “common interests” between an American unit and certain local actors (DOA, 2006, A-27 and A-28), then questions arise about how best to examine shared interests that may have existed not only in the past but also in a wartime context. For example, relevant actors may no longer reside in the area, either because of displacement, refugee migration, or fatal violence. If they do, they are likely to have safety-based incentives to portray one version of a relationship over others. Moreover, when studying the “common interests” of a military unit, questions arise over whose interests should be considereddthe commander's, the officers', or the majority of soldiers'? To help overcome these obstacles, the following analysis draws on data compiled from weekly reports of an American-led PRT based in Zabul Province in 2012 and 2013 (hereafter, the ZPRT). Using the text reports of the ZPRT provides a record of events, reactions, and similarities in responses to events, as well as a window into shared meanings, interests, and relationships with local actors. Crucially, this record was generated during efforts to win hearts and minds in a conflict zone. Analyzing the reports, which are produced by synthesizing the still-classified daily reports of distinct ZPRT sub-units, offers insight into the unit's comprehensive perspective of its relationships with the surround community. Finally, by examining the perspective of the ZPRT, the analysis uncovers constraints that the Americans themselves imposeddmost likely, inadvertentlydon efforts to win hearts and minds. The consequences of these constraints are the focus of the second analytical step. 4.1. Zabul in context Zabul is especially useful as a representative case of the south and southeast of the country. This region, home to most of the country's largest ethnic group, the Pashtuns, has been a focal point of the insurgency, as well as where the question of winning hearts and minds is most pertinent.1 The province is rural, like much of the region and country, but bisected by the Ring Road highway, along which most of the country's population lives. Its lack of a large urban center, such as Kandahar in neighboring Kandahar province, means that it is not home to an atypically strong state presence (Coburn, 2011). Such a representative combination of urbanization and population has resulted in levels of foreign aid near the mean of all Afghan provinces, excluding the populous and strategically valuable provinces of Kabul, Helmand, and Kandahar (Table 1). In addition, patterns of violence in Zabul roughly followed those in the surrounding region and country.2 The frequency of violent incidents preceding the case study period is, over time, slightly less than the country as a whole, but a little more than the surrounding provinces of Kandahar, Paktika, and Uruzgan while, on the whole, lower than in Ghazni (Fig. 1). These differences, however, are minimaldabout 10 incidents per monthdand, as a result, the counterinsurgency funds devoted to Zabul largely followed the pattern in the rest of the country. For example, the total funds disbursed in Afghanistan through the Commanders' Emergency Response Program (CERP), a key counterinsurgency program in the US military, increased from $157.3 million in 2006 to $414.9 million in 2009 and then decreased to $197.8 million in 2011. In Zabul, CERP spending went from $3.56 million in 2006 to $4.32 million in 2009. It then increased again to $6.43 million in 2011, most likely in response to

1 (Barfield, 2010) Outlines how the considerable variation in ethnicity, urbanization, infrastructure, violence, and historical experience across Afghanistan render national-level generalizability difficult, regardless of whether studies draw on ethnographic fieldwork, field experiments, surveys, or other large €rmer, 2012). Therefore, regional lessons, while more modest, are more likely to be valid. quantitative data sets (Wo 2 In 2012, The Afghanistan Ministry of Rural Rehabilitation and Development identified Zabul as “high risk [areas for incumbents],” along with the other southern provinces of Kandahar, Helmand, and Uruzgan (see http://www.nspafghanistan.org/default.aspx?sel¼27, last accessed 13 October 2014).

Please cite this article in press as: Karell, D., Local peace and contemporary conflict: Constructing commonality and exclusion during war in Afghanistan, Social Science Research (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ssresearch.2016.07.002

D. Karell / Social Science Research xxx (2016) 1e23

5

Fig. 1. Relative frequency of violence between country and surrounding provinces and Zabul preceding the case study. Note: Lines plot the difference between the country and surrounding provinces and Zabul. Source: (START, 2015).

an increase in violence.3 Zabul, then, should be seen as similar to much of contemporary southern Afghanistan: it is a poor, rural, remote part of the country containing both an active insurgency and a military-led hearts and minds campaign. Furthermore, the segments of Zabul's population are politically organized in a relatively typical fashion. Most formal power resides in its chief executive, the provincial governor, and the provincial line ministries, or the provincial branches of the national ministries tasked with service delivery in various sectors such as health and infrastructure. These two government offices, however, are sometimes in tension: not only do they derive support from different parts of the central administration, but provincial governors can exert oversight over the line ministries' major expenditures. As a result, governors and ministries may have varying goals and strategies at the provincial level (Rutting, 2012; World Bank, 2007). One potential exception is the provincial judiciary, representing the provincial-level prosecutors, investigators, and judges, which are meant to work in greater collaboration with the central and provincial executives. Below the provincial-level officials are the district governors and their administrators. While these governors are also appointed by Kabul, they typically are poorly resourced and have limited formal power. Instead, most district administrations derive their power informally, from personal relationships with local actors and by serving as brokers between residents and government authorities (Malkasian, 2013; World Bank, 2007).4 Zabul, like much of Afghanistan, also has non-government community leaders. Mullahs and village elders hold much power. The former, with their religious authority, are commonly considered as an alternative to the power of the state (Barfield and Nojumi, 2010). Moreover, many mullahs sided with the Taliban regime, as well as with more recent insurgent campaigns (Zaeef, 2010).5 Elders are similar to the mullahs in that their power is largely localized and their roles in society have often been seen as distinct from the state. However, they also sometimes serve as intermediaries between villages' locally specific systems of governance and the state; some are even appointed as district governors (Malkasian, 2013; Schetter, 2013). Finally, a handful non-government organizations (NGOs) and similar entities operated in Zabul through 2013, sometimes paralleling the state. NGOs, for example, carried out 90 percent of the national health ministry's service delivery through 2007 (World Bank, 2007). They also act as contractors for international donors, who are interested in bypassing corrupt

3

Figures from author's original analysis of CERP records. For more on CERP, see DOD 2011 and Child 2014. Unlike provincial governors, who are often appointed to provinces other than their home province so that their allegiance to the central government is stronger than to local patronage and kinship networks, district governors are commonly selected from local elites. This strategy echoes methods used by past Afghan rulers to control peripheral territories (Barfield, 2010). 5 Even those mullahs not aligned with the Taliban tend to be wary and distrustful of state actors and their foreign allies, viewing them as corruptive of traditional values and as undermining mullahs' influence (Malkasian, 2013). 4

Please cite this article in press as: Karell, D., Local peace and contemporary conflict: Constructing commonality and exclusion during war in Afghanistan, Social Science Research (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ssresearch.2016.07.002

6

D. Karell / Social Science Research xxx (2016) 1e23

government employees. Between 2002 and 2010, nearly 75 percent of aid was distributed to the country's residents outside of government channels (de Beer, 2012; Miakhel, 2012). 4.2. The 2012e13 period I use the ZPRT reports from July 2012 through January 2013 to capture variation in situationally dependent impressions over time. The period begins with the arrival of a new unit of Americans to staff the ZPRT and lasts until the unit draws down its activities in preparation for its withdrawal, marking the end of the ZPRT and permanently stationed foreign troops in the province.6 Significantly, this period captures the announcement of the ZPRT's withdrawal. While the unit arrived in July 2012 knowing that it would be the last PRT, it did not know nor share with Afghans the precise date of departure until the week of December 1, 2012.7 4.3. The PRT reports The ZPRT, like all PRTs, was led by a military-civilian executive committee and mixed military-civilian teams accomplished many of its tasks.8 During 2012 and 2013, however, three civilian employees of the US Department of State wrote the ZPRT's weekly reports. Their primarily audiences were the unit leadership and the US embassy in Kabul, although the authors were aware that other stake-holders in the region, such as other members of the military forces, could access the reports.9 The reports, each about 3500 words long, are organized into several sections: “Governance”, “Rule of Law”, “Agriculture and Economic Growth”, “Infrastructure”, “Health & Education”, and “Requests for Assistance”. Each section, aggregated and synthesized from the daily reports the task-specific sub-unit, is written as a narrative story, describing the individuals with whom the PRT personnel interacted; why they interacted with these individuals; what these individuals said, expressed, and did; and anything else of interest that the Americans heard, saw, and did (or did not do). The voice typically reads as purely objective, cataloguing events and spoken words, although there are instances in which the voice is interpretative, offering opinion and critical analysis.10 The weekly reports are not publicly distributed and have been acquired through a Freedom of Information request.11 It is important to stress that the reports reflect the authors' subjective interpretation of events and actors. This would be of serious concern if my goal were to portray an objective picture of “reality.” However, this paper explores the ZPRT's perception of the surrounding social and political landscape. Of course, the extent to which the reports accurately capture the ZPRT's experience could be questioned. Such concern is mitigated by the fact that the reports are derived from a compilation of the ZPRT's depictions of many observations, meetings, events, and experiences over time. In addition, while the expected bias would be towards showing the ZPRT in a positive lightddemonstrating to its superiors that it successfully constructed a trusted network among the various segments of Zabul's population that remained stable until it withdrewdthis is the opposite of what the following analysis shows. Thus, these data offer an opportunity to study at regular intervals how a military unit's understanding of the surrounding community emerged over time while in the midst of wardan opportunity rarely afforded to other studies on contemporary conflicts due to the difficulty in collecting both repeated qualitative observations and reliable quantitative data.12 Indeed, a

6 The original ZPRT unit arrived in 2007. Until 2013, the PRT had been continuously staffed by American units, along with small contingents from NATO allies, serving in nine-to 12-month tours. 7 The 2012e13 period also encompasses the end to many other forms of externally provided aid in the province. For example, Roots of Peace, an international NGO, reports enrolling 674 Zabul famers in its programs in the first quarter of 2013, 50 farmers in the last quarter of 2013, and 159 in the first quarter of 2014. Similarly, it trained 28 local agents in the first quarter of 2013 but only five by last quarter of the year (http://rootsofpeace.org, last accessed 13 October 2014). One exception is aid provided by the National Solidarity Program (NSP), which was designed to increase across the country between 2011 and 2014. However, compared to the rest of the southern region reported NSP growth in Zabul has held somewhat steady: of all supported communities in the south, only 7.6 percent were in Zabul in 2011 and 8.4 percent in 2014 (http://www.nspafghanistan.org, last accessed 13 October 2014). Moreover, Zabul residents have recently claimed that NSP aid does not actually lead to the materialization of development projects (Pajhwok News, 2013). 8 In 2012, the ZPRT counted about 30 civilians working alongside over 100 members of the US military. 9 Specifically, PRTs were tasked with “guiding and mentoring [Afghans] from behind and underneath,” as well as with providing security and financial support to local political officials, NGOs, and members of the Afghan security forces. They “seek to establish an environment that is stable enough for the local GIROA [Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan] authorities, international agencies, non-government agencies and civil society to engage in reconstruction, political transition and social and economic development … This includes but is not limited to direct support … of security, governance, and development” (ISAF, 2010, 5). (In contrast, combat units, such as the US Special Forces, which may be stationed alongside a PRT, were solely focused on targeting insurgent forces.) To help accomplish such complex goals, PRTs were organized as a “task force,” consisting of different groups from Western militaries, government agencies, and police advisors. American PRTs, for example, generally included staff from the Department of Defense, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the Department of State (DOS), and other civilian agencies. These civilian members then joined with military personnel to form various teams, such as the “Civil Affairs team” and the “Rule of Law team,” that worked with specific Afghan counterparts and provided different types of aid (ISAF, 2010; Piiparinen, 2007). 10 For example, one report includes the statement (the following names are withheld by the author), “It is unfortunate to hear this report [from a villager] because there is an expectation that since [an NGO] is an implementing partner they would be somewhat fair, and even though there are two sides to every story, this isn't the first time we have heard such allegations about [an NGO employee]” (ZPRT report, 20 November 2012). 11 The daily reports, on which the weekly reports are based, remained classified as of the time of writing. 12 For a discussion on the limitations of large-scale quantitative studies in Afghanistan and how they may produce contradictory findings, see Lyall et al., 2013, 695.

Please cite this article in press as: Karell, D., Local peace and contemporary conflict: Constructing commonality and exclusion during war in Afghanistan, Social Science Research (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ssresearch.2016.07.002

D. Karell / Social Science Research xxx (2016) 1e23

7

goal of this study is to explore the potential that written reports, which are routinely and widely produced during some contemporary wars but commonly overlooked by scholars of war, have to provide insights into wartime social dynamics. 4.4. Methodology The ZPRT's view of the actors in its surrounding local socio-political landscape is examined through its understanding of when and how various actors in Zabul responded similarly to mutually-experienced events. Analyzing the similarity in actors' responses to events over time entails coding the weekly reports to produce a novel measure, which I term response equivalence. This concept is akin to structural equivalence in network analysis, commonly used to describe the degree to which actors have similar ties to and from all other actors in a network (Wasserman and Faust, 1994, 356). So, to put response equivalence in terms of structural equivalence: two or more actors have a higher degree of response equivalence if they share a greater number of types of responses (or “ties”) to experiences they have in common. Response equivalence is based on how the ZPRT reported daily interactions in Zabul: actors meeting, discussing, planing, and acting during shared events, day after day. As such, it measures how similarly the actors are responding in the context of these events as they occur while also, crucially, enabling an explicit and systematic comparison over time. This, in turn, depicts when, with whom, and howdor, to what extentdthe ZPRT perceived the impressions that local actors were portraying, as well as its perceptions of how these actors were reacting to the ZPRT's own portrayals. From this, we can analyze when and among whom those relationships of common interest and mutual understandingdthe likely foundations of trusted networksdwere emerging, in the eyes of the ZPRT. 4.4.1. Coding The analysis of the PRT reports builds on narrative network analysis, an approach based on the idea that narratives can be converted into networks of elements and then analyzed using network analysis (Bearman et al., 1999; Bearman and Stovel, 2000). From this approach, I adopt the strategy of identifying the basic elements and relations in the reports' narratives: actors, events, and the actors' expressed opinions and perceived reactions to the events. Conceptualized as a network, these elements give us a bipartite graph. Actors form one subset of nodes while the events form a separate subset of nodes (Breiger, 1974). An actor node is connected to an event node by edges representing the various reactions of that given actor to that given event. The more two actors are tied to the same event through the same types of edges, the more those two actors are structurally similar, or have a high degree of response equivalence. The first step in the analysis requires identifying and coding each event in the text, a relatively straightforward task because the authors specify each event. For example, they may write, A representative of [an NGO] visited the PRT to work on some issues. He met with USAID FPOs and the ROP COR to discuss progress on the slaughterhouse and other projects. or On 27 September, the RoL Team met with the NDS Chief Prosecutor to discuss his current caseload and to introduce him to new RoL members. Next, each individual actor involved in the event is identified. Taking the second example above, this would result in two actors, the Rule of Law (“RoL”) Team and the National Directorate of Security (NDS) Chief Prosecutor for Zabul. These actors are subsequently coded as an actor category to increase the feasibility of analysis and interpretation. The categories are taken either directly from the textdan individual understood to be a village elder is almost always referred to as an “elder” in the reportsdor from the organizational structure of the Afghan government, such as when an employee of the Ministry of Rural Rehabilitation and Development is grouped in the category Line Ministries. Using categories for individual actors reflects how the ZPRT referred to them. It also provides a stable referent, used by the ZPRT itself, while individuals may change. That is, while the “representative of [an NGO]” may be a different person each week the analytical category Contractor remains constant.13 The only category constituted by one specific individual is the Provincial Governor category, which refers to the governor of Zabul at the time. All the actor categories drawn from the reports and appearing in the following analysis are listed in Table 2, along with brief descriptions. The actors are organized in a manner following from their descriptions above (see Subsection 4.1). The third step entails specifying the edges that tie the actors and events. Since actors can understand and react to an event in multiple ways, this requires identifying and coding various opinions, sentiments, and responses, with each of these types of reactions being a unique tie between the actor and event (Smith, 2007; White et al., 1976). That is, an actor's repertoire of reactions to an event forms a set of ties unique to that actor and that event. Even when the event is shared by actors, one

13 Collapsing individuals into analytical categories produces greater variance in the response equivalence values for the categories that include larger numbers of individuals not tied by a common identity. For example, the Resident category, which includes many different individuals, has more variation than the Mullah category, which includes only a handful of individuals with a relatively mutual ideology and social position. This variation, however, should not be considered as imprecision in measurement but rather indicative of the type of category: variation in the Resident category suggests that residents are more likely to act independently. Future studies adopting this study's methodology may decide to forgo the use of actor categories and instead code each individual. Such a choice is dependent on the type of data and preferred level of abstraction, and is not at odds with the method being described here.

Please cite this article in press as: Karell, D., Local peace and contemporary conflict: Constructing commonality and exclusion during war in Afghanistan, Social Science Research (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ssresearch.2016.07.002

8

D. Karell / Social Science Research xxx (2016) 1e23 Table 2 Categories of Actors. Actor category Out-group actors 1 2

Zabul Provincial Reconstruction Team (ZPRT) Includes all ZPRT teams and all non-Afghans associated with the ZPRT. Contractors Includes all actors representing or working for non-government organizations based outside of Zabul.

Government actors 3

Central Administration Includes all actors affiliated with the central government in Kabul and not based in Zabul, such as members of parliament. 4 Central Security Includes all actors affiliated with the central security services stationed in Zabul, such as the Afghan National Army and Afghan National Police. 5 Provincial Governor Refers to the individual who served as governor of Zabul from 2009epresent. Provincial governors are appointed by the president. 6 Provincial Judiciary Includes all actors comprising Zabul's judicial system, such as judges and prosecutors. These individuals are appointed by national Ministry of Justice. 7 Line Ministries Includes all actors working as the provincial-level representative or employees of for the national-level ministries. They are appointed by a national-level ministry such as the Ministry of Rural Rehabilitation and Development. 8 District Administrations Includes all the district governors serving from 2012e2013 and their administrative employees. These individuals are appointed by the central government. Between 2012e2013 many of Zabul's districts did not have filled governor posts. Non-government elites and unaffiliated residents 9 Elders Includes all actors described as an “elder” in the reports, as well as those individuals depicted as having notable influence over residents. 10 Mullahs Includes all actors described as a “mullah”, or local religious leader, in the reports. 11 Residents Includes all actors not specifically linked with a named organization and portrayed as ”regular” residents in the reports.

actor's set of ties may be different from another actor's set because two actors do not always react to a shared event in the same way. In theory, determining and coding the various types of responses triggered by an event is a daunting task since individuals can express a vast range of reactions. However, in the case of the ZPRT's weekly reports, this endeavor is mitigated by the fact that nearly all events are scheduled meetingsdor discussions of meetingsdabout developing and securing Zabul. The regularity and semi-formality of these events, along with the narrow scope of discussion, significantly constrains how the reactions of actors are reported. As a result, 11 types of ties are coded, representing the range of reactions by actors captured in the text. They were identified by reading a sample of reportsdthree from the first third of the covered time period, three from the middle third, and three from the last thirddand were then applied to each week's report, which were read in chronological order.14 The first two types of ties are motivated by contact theory, or the idea that interpersonal contact can increase shared understanding (Allport, 1954). The occurrence of such interaction is captured by the “Interaction” type of tie (see Row 1, Table 3), representing an instance when an actor meets with another actor or participates in an event with another actor or group of actors. All actors present at a shared event have this tie coded, creating a minimal level of response equivalence among actors for that particular event. The second type of possible tie, “Collaboration”, is coded if the interaction is described as collaborative, or when actors are jointly working or focused on a shared task (see Row 2, Table 3). This tie is always coded in addition to the Interaction tie, effectively strengthening the response equivalence. The third type of tie captures a less tangible connectiondthat of an actor's awareness of another actor who not present, such as when two actors are discussing a third, absent, actor (see Row 3, Table 3). Coding this type of tie acknowledges that a particular type of link can exist between a present actor and an absent actor. The remaining types of ties represent the expressed reactions that appear in the reports (see Table 3). The first two of these indicate whether an actor vocalizes or implies a positive sentiment or, alternatively, a negative sentiment. The next one

14 All but one of the 11 types of ties were established from the sample. The eleventh type of tie, an accusation of corruption, or “Corruption” in Table 3, was identified while reading the non-sampled reports. After it was identified, all prior reports were recoded in light of this tie.

Please cite this article in press as: Karell, D., Local peace and contemporary conflict: Constructing commonality and exclusion during war in Afghanistan, Social Science Research (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ssresearch.2016.07.002

D. Karell / Social Science Research xxx (2016) 1e23

9

Table 3 Types of ties. Type of tie 1

2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

Interaction Actor meets with another actor (e.g., a scheduled meeting) or participates in an Event with another actor or group of actors (e.g. a ribbon-cutting ceremony). Collaboration Actor collaborates on a project with another actor (e.g. drafting a grant proposal). Attention paid to non-present actor Actor is aware of (e.g., spoke about) another actor without that actor being present. Positive or cordial sentiment Actor expresses positive opinions or perceptions about an actor or event. Negative or critical sentiment Actor expresses negative or critical opinions or perceptions about an actor or event. Decisive decision-making Actor decides on an issue or commits to taking an imminent action. Indecisive decision-making Actor does not decide on an issue or does not commit to take an imminent action. Displeasure Actor is displeased but not necessarily critical or spiteful. Self-critical Actor is self-critical in regards to his or her own behavior. Corruption Actor is accused of corruption or implicated in corruption. Action Actor undertook an individuated action and no opinion or sentiment is expressed.

indicates whether an actor makes a widely-acknowledged, and often positively portrayed, decisive decision in the context of the given event. The following type of tie indicates that an actor does not make a decision and is instead portrayed as wavering, often in a negative light, in the context of the given event. The eighth type of tie indicates that an actor is displeased with what is occurring but does not express an outright negative or critical sentiment. The ninth type of tie indicates that an actor expresses self-criticism. The next type of tie indicates that an actor is accused of corruption or implicated in corruption. The final type of tie simply indicates that the actor undertook an individuated action during an event that was recognized by others present, but no sort of opinion or sentiment is expressed or implied. Again, individuals are capable of expressing many more reactions to an event than those recorded here but in the context of the routine meetings between actors in Zabul, these ties represent the range of reported reactions. With these ties, then, actors are connected to shared events with varying response equivalence, depending on each actors' own set of ties. Extending this coding strategy across all reports generates a dataset of events, actors, and their reactions to each event for each week of the ZPRT's tour. In total, 1216 events are coded, with the ZPRT being the most frequently mentioned actor (Appendix A). The next two most frequently appearing actors are the provincial governor and the residents. The mullahs are the least frequent actordnot a surprising result considering that mullahs generally avoid Westerners and state actors (Malkasian, 2013). The Interaction tie is the most frequent type of tie connecting actors to events, followed by “attention paid to non-present actors” (Appendix A). Interestingly, negative sentiments are relatively frequent and, if combined with reactions of displeasure, they occur more than twice as frequently as positive reactions. Perhaps not surprisingly, reactions of self-criticism and accusations of corruption are the least frequent. 4.4.2. Analytical strategy The response equivalence for a given event is calculated using the cosine similarity formula. In conceptual terms, this entails treating each actors' set of reactions to a given event as a multidimensional vector, with each coordinate of the vector representing the presence or absence of a reaction (Table 4), and then calculating the angular distance between the vectors of two actors. For example, the similarity of the vectors of Actor 1 and Actor 2 for Event 1 during Week 1 in Table 4,

Actor 1 : ½0; 0; 1…1 Actor 2 : ½0; 1; 1…0 is calculated using the cosine similarity formula, or

cosðqÞ ¼

Pn A$B  Bi i¼1ffi Ai q ffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi ¼ qffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi Pn Pn jjAjjjjBjj 2 2 i¼1 ðAi Þ  i¼1 ðBi Þ

Cosine similarity is determined by taking the dot product of vector A and B, calculating the magnitudes of vector A and B, multiplying the magnitudes of A and B, and, finally, dividing the dot product of A and B by the product of the magnitudes of A Please cite this article in press as: Karell, D., Local peace and contemporary conflict: Constructing commonality and exclusion during war in Afghanistan, Social Science Research (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ssresearch.2016.07.002

10

D. Karell / Social Science Research xxx (2016) 1e23

Table 4 Data structure. Actors

Week

Event

Reaction 1

Reaction 2

Reaction 3

…

Reaction j

Actor Actor … Actor Actor Actor … Actor Actor Actor … Actor Actor Actor … Actor … Actor

1 2

1 1

1 1

0 0

0 1

1 1

… …

1 0

m 1 2

1 1 1

1 2 2

1 1 0

0 1 0

1 1 0

… … …

0 1 1

m 1 2

1 1 1

2 n n

1 0 0

0 0 1

0 1 1

… … …

0 1 1

m 1 2

1 2 2

n 1 1

0 0 0

0 0 1

0 1 0

… … …

1 0 0

m

2

1

1

1

0

…

1

m

k

n

0

1

1

…

0

and B. The resulting value falls between 0 and 1, with 0 meaning independence (or, orthogonal vectors) and 1 meaning 100 percent similar (or, overlapping vectors). Cosine similarity is particularly useful in this context because it does not take order into account, it can be used for nonbinary vectors, and it only considers non-zero values. This last attribute is vital for two reasons. First, the vectors of reactions are sparsedrarely do actors relate to an event in more than a few waysdthusly requiring the analyst not consider all the [0, 0] matches as similar reactions. Second, it ensures that only positive observations of reactions account for the similarity value, meaning that rates of interaction do not have a direct impact on calculated values (Huang, 2008; Leydesdorff, 2008).15 However, this use of cosine similarity produces an aggregated measure of ties. That is, it takes multiple types of reactionsdtypes of tiesdinto account to present an overall picture of how actors relate to one another; it does not distinguish between the distinct types of reactions (ties). It is suggested that future research adopting this method examine which types of ties are more likely in given situations. Lastly, the cosine similarity values are used to generate nonmetric multidimensional scaling (MDS) plots, which are in turn used to analyze actors' response equivalence. These plots draw on a nonmetric MDS function to place actors in a Euclidean space based on their ordinal, or nonmetric, distance from one another.16 In other words, actors are situated relative to all others so that the plotted distances between them best correspond to some kind of “proximity” measure, such as physical distance or, in this case, response equivalence. So, in the plots below, the more similar two or more actors are to one another, in the eyes of the ZPRT, the closer they will be plotted. Interpreting what the plotted positions of actors mean beyond their relative similarity, however, requires the researcher to draw upon theory and prior knowledge of the case (Borg and Groenen, 2005). I therefore present and describe the plots in the following section without in-depth interpretation of patterns, and then with an overarching interpretation in the Discussion section. The fit of MDS models are evaluated using a measure of stress, or an indication of the mismatch between the proximity value and plotted distance. Customarily, a stress of 0.20 has been considered poor, 0.10 as fair, 0.05 as good, and 0.025 as excellent (Kruskal, 1964). This simple norm, however, often leads to misunderstandings, such as concluding that only models with a stress below 0.20 are acceptable. In fact, stress is only a measure of how precisely the model represents the data. This is highly dependent on several aspects of the data, particularly the sample size and the parameters of the model, such as the dimensions to be plotted.17 For this reason, I report the stress but also the results of a further test done to reject a null hypothesis. This test compares a model's stress to the stress of a model with the same sample size and dimensions, but using random data. To reject the null hypothesis, the stress of models using the data from the reports should be lower than the

15 The rate of interaction between actors will only affect the representativeness of the observations. That is, if actors have a decreasing rate of interaction their observed reactions may be considered to be less representative of how they “would” interact, but the similarity measure continues to capture how they do interact independent of how often they do meet. Moreover, we have little reasons to doubt that the interactions that do occur are reflective of a (theoretical) full set or pattern of mutual reactions. 16 Nonmetric MDS is used instead of related techniques, such as factor analysis, because the calculated cosine similarity values represents relative difference, or distance, between actors rather than the scaler product between two actors (the latter of which would be more appropriate for factor analytic formulas). Much has been written in various disciplines comparing MDS to related techniques, but a foundational discussion applicable to political sociology can be found in Rabinowitz 1975. 17 Allowing more dimensions usually produces lower stress. Typically, a dimension is chosen so that a further increase does not significantly reduce stress. Scree plots, as seen in Appendix B, are used for determining the utility of further increasing dimensions.

Please cite this article in press as: Karell, D., Local peace and contemporary conflict: Constructing commonality and exclusion during war in Afghanistan, Social Science Research (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ssresearch.2016.07.002

D. Karell / Social Science Research xxx (2016) 1e23

11

Residents

Line Ministries

Elders

Provincial Judiciary Mullahs

Contractors

Central Administration District Administrations Provincial Governor

ZPRT

Fig. 2. Arrival.

stress of models using random data (Borg and Groenen, 2005). However, regardless of any stress values, the models and plots are accurately ordering relative distances based on the proximity values. Below, I divide the analysis into seven time periods, each four weeks long except for a period of three weeks preceding the withdrawal announcement (Period 5) and another period of three weeks beginning with the week of the announcement (Period 6).18 The plots for these periods are created from standardized dissimilarity matrices calculated from the means of the cosine similarity values from each of the weeks within each of the time periods. The similarity values themselves are based on 2480 incidences of ties, or “observations” (see Table A.6 in Appendix A).19

5. Data and methods: consequences of local understandings To examine the consequences of how actors understand one another during local-level wartime development and peacemaking, I analyze data from 29 interviews conducted in a rural district of northern Kandahar Province during the winter of 2014e15. Interviews were not conducted in Zabul because of security concerns. A rural area of Kandahar was selected because Kandahar neighbors Zabul; the district's rural setting mirrors that of Zabul; and, like Zabul, it was a site of US military-led development tied to hearts and minds efforts. Due to societal restrictions, the respondents were all male. They ranged in age from about 20 to 60, with an average of around 40 in each research site.20 The majority of respondents were farmers or shop-owners. Respondents were asked to participate through convenience sampling and were interviewed in private settings, such as in a sitting room of a residence.21 These identification and interview procedures, a result of concerns with discussing potentially sensitive matters, present a challenge for identifying causality. However, because of the relative similarity between Zabul and northern, rural Kandahar, the interview data plausibly provides insights into the results of the ZPRT's interactions and impression-management with local Zabul residents. Moreover, instead of a strict identification of causality, the interview results should be seen as pointing

18 The plots could be divided into any period of a week or greater. I select five periods of four weeks and two of three weeks, the latter two bracketing a major event, to capture a middle degree of sensitivity to change in response equivalence. Temporal periods in other applications of this analytical approach would have a lower constraint imposed by the smallest temporal unit of their observations. 19 The plots only contain actors that appear in the reports during each time period. For example, the Central Security category is not included in the first plot because the ZPRT does not record any meetings with this group during the first six weeks of its deployment. For those interested in the routine workings of politics, development, and reconstruction in rural Afghanistan, it may be of interest to note when certain actors are not present in the ZPRT's reports. 20 It is not uncommon for Afghans to not know their precise age. 21 Interviews were conducted with the assistance an interpreter closely familiar the research site. The interviews were conducted in Pashto and notes were hand-written in English and Pashto. The latter were later translated into English. The study was conducted under IRB NYUAD #001-2015.

Please cite this article in press as: Karell, D., Local peace and contemporary conflict: Constructing commonality and exclusion during war in Afghanistan, Social Science Research (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ssresearch.2016.07.002

12

D. Karell / Social Science Research xxx (2016) 1e23

towards future advancements in the design and implementation of future causally-oriented studies, as well as the interpretation of existing findings in other contexts (Burde, 2012). 6. Findings 6.1. Period 1: arrival of ZRPT When the ZPRT arrives in Zabul, it perceives itself as most similar to the administrators of appointed government officials (Fig. 2).22 This cluster is set off from a cluster comprising what can be interpreted as local civilian actorsdelders, mullahs, residentsdand the provincial judiciary. Unattached to either cluster are some of the most powerful government actors, the provincial governor and provincial-level employees of the line ministries, or the central government ministries. This indicates that when the ZPRT arrives it understands itself as relatively similar to staff administratorsdsometimes referred to as “second string [government] leadership” in the reportsdwhile dissimilar from the majority of local actors. At the same time, it sees two local government actors, the governor and line ministries, as themselves distinct from Zabul's various actors, as well as from each other. This arrangement is consistent with how the reports portray the ZPRT's experience when they arrive. They appear to see many of contractors and higher-level officials who directly answer to Kabul as absconding from their responsibilities, including “not answering their phones or email.” In contrast, the locally-based government administrators are often seen favorablyda district administrator, for example, is praised for proactively recording a radio message appealing to residents to report suspicious behaviordperhaps because they are seen as being forced to face the daily challenges in Zabul, like the ZPRT personnel. Distinct from all these actors is the Provincial Governor, who is, at this point, consistently portrayed as impressive, decisive, and “energetic.” 6.2. Periods 2 and 3 For the eight weeks following the first month, the ZPRT continues to have relative low response equivalence with Zabul's actors (Fig. 3a).23 However, it appears to develop a more complex understanding of the surrounding community. In the four weeks immediately following the arrival month, the ZPRT sees itself as less similar to the central and district administrators than before. Instead, these administrators have become more similar to other government actors, particularly the line ministries. The provincial judiciary and non-government local actors continue to have a relative high level of response equivalence, whereas the contractors are now seen as less similar to these non-government local actors. Put concisely, the ZPRT no longer perceives clustering in Zabul, but rather it sees the out-group actorsditself and the contractorsdas relatively distinct from all local actors. At the same time, it appears to sense a slight polarization between some government actors and non-government, informal community leaders and residents. During the subsequent four weeks, Period 3, the ZPRT continues to understand itself as relatively dissimilar from the other actors in Zabul, and now especially different from the community's elders (Fig. 3b).24 It also continues to perceive a distinctness between government and non-government local actors. The former are relatively proximate to each other while at roughly the same distance from the ZPRT. This grouping now also contains the contractors, who have become more dissimilar to the ZPRT than in the previous period. An exception to the distance between government and non-government actors are the mullahs and district administrators: they are now indistinguishable, in terms of response equivalence, in the eyes of the ZPRT. Interestingly, these actors are the ones that operate in spaces most “distant” from the ZPRT. The mullahs occupy a social space typically distinct from national projects and the district administrators are charged with overseeing the districts outside the provincial capital, where the ZRPT is based. 6.3. Periods 4 and 5 As the ZPRT continues its deployment, now in the ninth through thirteenth weeks, it understands itself as relatively more similar to many government actors, such as, similarly to Period 1, the central and district administrators (Fig. 4a).25 Intriguingly, response equivalence is also high with one type of informal community leaders: the mullahs. In the reports, this period includes a formal, officially-mandated “outreach” effort to mullahs, which likely results in the ZPRT perceiving that they are holding “common interests” and incorporating the mullahs into their trusted networks.

22 This model's fit has a stress of 0.11, lower than the null level of stress, 0.20. For more information on the fit from scree and Shepard plots, see Appendix B. In the appendix, Figure B.6 shows the plot of the three dimensional model. 23 This model's fit has a stress of 0.11, lower than the null level of stress, 0.18. For more information on the fit from scree and Shepard plots, see Appendix B. In the appendix, Figure B.7 shows the plot of the three dimensional model. 24 This model's fit has a stress of 0.11, lower than the null level of stress, 0.18. For more information on the fit from scree and Shepard plots, see Appendix B. In the appendix, Figure B.8 shows the plot of the three dimensional model. 25 This model's fit has a stress of 0.10, lower than the null level of stress, 0.21. For more information on the fit from scree and Shepard plots, see Appendix B. In the appendix, Figure B.9 shows the plot of the three dimensional model.

Please cite this article in press as: Karell, D., Local peace and contemporary conflict: Constructing commonality and exclusion during war in Afghanistan, Social Science Research (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ssresearch.2016.07.002

D. Karell / Social Science Research xxx (2016) 1e23

13

Fig. 3. Weeks 5 through 12 of ZPRT Activity and subsequent violence.

The ZPRT, however, continues to understand itself as relatively distinct from the elders and provincial judiciary. They also now see the non-affiliated residents as less similar to themselves. Perhaps more positively, at least for the ZPRT, they perceive a higher degree of response equivalence among elders, line ministries, central security forces, and residents. This suggests that the ZPRT sees the emergence of a trust network among actors vital for nation-building projects, but does not see itself as closely integrated in this network.

Please cite this article in press as: Karell, D., Local peace and contemporary conflict: Constructing commonality and exclusion during war in Afghanistan, Social Science Research (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ssresearch.2016.07.002

14

D. Karell / Social Science Research xxx (2016) 1e23

Fig. 4. Weeks preceding the withdrawal announcement.

During the three weeks leading up to the withdrawal announcement, the ZPRT continues to perceive itself as very similar to some Afghan actors, relative to the initial three periods (Fig. 4b).26 However, during this period, it has the highest level of response equivalence with the provincial governor, a noticeable change from previous periods. The ZPRT's perceived

26 This model's fit has a stress of 0.13, lower than the null level of stress, 0.20. For more information on the fit from scree and Shepard plots, see Appendix B. In the appendix, Figure B.10 shows the plot of the three dimensional model.

Please cite this article in press as: Karell, D., Local peace and contemporary conflict: Constructing commonality and exclusion during war in Afghanistan, Social Science Research (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ssresearch.2016.07.002

D. Karell / Social Science Research xxx (2016) 1e23

15

Fig. 5. After the withdrawal announcement.

similarity with non-government local actors remains relatively low, although it still sees what could perhaps be interpreted as a “nation-building” cluster, constituted by the provincial judiciary, residents, elders, and the line ministries. During this period, the ZPRT understands the other out-group actors, the contractors, as having a relatively low level of response equivalence with all other community actors, including itself.

Please cite this article in press as: Karell, D., Local peace and contemporary conflict: Constructing commonality and exclusion during war in Afghanistan, Social Science Research (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ssresearch.2016.07.002

16

D. Karell / Social Science Research xxx (2016) 1e23

6.4. Periods 6 and 7: withdrawal The ZPRT's perception of the social and political landscape changes greatly after it announces the permanent withdrawal of foreign forces. Its response equivalence with nearly all other actors has decreased (Fig. 5a).27 This is especially the case with the provincial governor, from whom the ZPRT is now relatively very different. In addition, many of the government actors are now perceived as being distinct from one another, relative to the preceding period. For example, important provincial level actorsdthe judiciary, governor, and line ministriesdare now seen as being more dissimilar to one another. The residents, elders, and several government actors now share lower levels of response equivalence. The district administrators and elders are an exception. They are now, in the eyes of the ZPRT, indistinguishable from one another. In the final period, beginning four weeks after the withdrawal announcement and well into preparations for departure, the ZPRT continues to see itself as very dissimilar from all the Afghan actors (Fig. 5b).28 It understands itself as most similar with the central administrators, but even this level of response equivalence is lower than with government actors during the preceding periods. The ZPRT now understands itself as most distinct from Zabul's residents, mullahs, district administrators, and the government's service providers, or the line ministries. At the same time, it sees some government and nongovernment actors as indistinguishable in terms of response equivalence: the governor and elders are the same, as are the district administrators and mullahs. Indeed, in these final days, the reports portray a view of the local landscape as poorly functioning across actors. For example, the Governor is reported to be in denial and angry about the withdrawal; the Afghan army unit has no plans to fill the impending security gap; local administrators do not seem concerned about employees not being paid; and construction projects initiated during the ZPRT's deployment are of low quality (“pictures of the faulty bridges show them bowing under their own weight”).

6.5. Consequences To assess the response equivalence of the ZPRT and Zabul's local actors from Afghans' perspective, as well as to explore potential consequences, I conduct a second step in the analysis drawing on data from interviews conducted in a neighboring area. Respondents' perspectives largely corroborate the textual analysisdAmerican forces mostly constrained response equivalence to a subset of local actorsdwhile also suggesting direct impacts of such constraints. Interview respondents reported two broad effects of hearts and minds efforts in their community. The first centers on how residents' understandings of foreign personnel and their actions negatively influence the foreigners' legitimacy among residents. This occurred largely because of two reasons. First, foreign personnel typically interacted with local actors who were not representative of the community. Specifically, aid projects were developed in collaboration with residents who held official posts, were the most charismatic or prominent, willing to work with foreigners, and could deliver the services that were the most familiar to foreigners, such as government sanctioning, rather than with those residents who were widely respected and influential. For example, one respondent recounted how foreign personnel “did not support the real and actual … elders who really had support among the community. Instead foreigners worked with the few [residents] who were contractors.”29 Another respondent explained that the foreigners wanted to implement all the projects and distribute their aid very quickly, instead of knowing the area. If the Americans wanted to really know about the people or the [community leaders], they should have tried to take their time to know and learn about the local people. Instead, they adopted another procedure. They decided to call … [local prominent figures] into their own military base and told them that they would give them the aid since [these individuals] are the representatives of the local people and could distribute all the aid in a just manner to the local people.30 Second, the actions of foreign personnel motivated some local actors to adjust their behavior in ways that neighbors disapproved ofdand, at the same time, likely made them appear to the foreigners as similar. Specifically, many local officials responded to incentives created by the distribution of aid projects by becoming “contractors,” a term used in a denigrating manner to signify collusion with foreigners for self-interested motives. Other locals, typically the most wealthy, got in touch with district authorities and then, along with elders and the district officials, misguided the [foreigners] who were bringing the foreign aid by saying to them, “Provide us the aid first, then, since we know our people and we are their representatives, we will distribute the aid among them.”31

27 This model's fit has a stress of 0.16, lower than the null level of stress, 0.18. For more information on the fit from scree and Shepard plots, see Appendix B. In the appendix, Figure B.11 shows the plot of the three dimensional model. 28 This model's fit has a stress of 0.17, lower than the null level of stress, 0.18. For more information on the fit from scree and Shepard plots, see Appendix B. In the appendix, Figure B.12 shows the plot of the three dimensional model. As suggested by the stress measures, the 3D is particularly informative during Period 7. The plot shows how the distance between the governor/elders and the ZPRT, central administrators, and district administrators/mullahs is even greater than shown in the 2D plot. 29 Interview, 26 December 2014. 30 Interview, 23 December 2014. 31 Interview, 23 December 2014.

Please cite this article in press as: Karell, D., Local peace and contemporary conflict: Constructing commonality and exclusion during war in Afghanistan, Social Science Research (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ssresearch.2016.07.002

D. Karell / Social Science Research xxx (2016) 1e23

17

The second effect noted by respondents was an increasingly inequitable distribution of benefits across the population: the local actors who managed to integrate themselves into the foreigners' “trusted network” were the primary beneficiaries. Nearly every respondent expressed the same type of frustration, saying something akin to “after [locals who liaised with foreigners] received the aid they divided it between themselves without giving anything to local people.”32 For example, after explaining how the Americans invited local notables into their military base to plan aid distribution, “these [notables] accepted [the plan for distribution], but once they received the aid they took all of it for themselves and did not give anythingdor just very littledto the local people.33 Together, these two effects produced feelings of exclusion among residents. Respondents frequently portrayed themselves as excluded from foreign actors and their aiddboth because the foreign actors had been delegitimated and because of their actual practice of aid distributiondas well as from a subset of local neighbors, particularly local notables, government officials, and other elites. One resident said, as villagers, we see, hear, and observe things done by [local elites]. If we see they use our area [manteqa] name to collect money and assistance from the foreigners, then we do not support them. We do not listen to them. We do not help them. For instance, aid assistance was meant to come to our area more than 20 times but it was instead distributed in the district center [implied: because of insecurity]. Very few actual residents of this area received the assistance; the rest was sold by the [elites] of this area. They are no longer influential. They cannot even come to this area.34 In summary, how foreign actors pursued hearts and minds efforts at the local-level produced two effects. First, the foreigners and the local actors with whom they most closely interacted became delegitimated among residents. Second, they provided differential benefits across the various local actors, with those situated more closely receiving most of the benefits. Together, these effects had a distinct consequence: local residents came to feel excluded in their own communitydexcluded from both the foreign actors who were there to help them and their more powerful neighbors who were purportedly acting in their best interests.

7. Discussion and conclusion Much of the existing research on “winning hearts and minds” during contemporary wars asks if reconstruction and development projects have had pacifying effects. Less attention has been paid to understanding how such effortsdpart of the West's local turn in warmaking and peacekeeping strategydunfold. This study presents the initial development of an approach to studying the dynamics and consequences of contemporary conflict- and post-conflict activity by incumbents at the local-level. Specifically, it explores such processes by examining the understandingsdperceptions of shared interests, outlooks, and reactionsda US military unit has of local actors in a wartime community, as well as the effects that such understandings may have on local residents. This section first interprets the findings in light of the theoretical expectations while also pointing to some limitations. The second portion discusses the broader contributions of the study. Namely, by specifying wartime development actors' perceptions of their relationships with local actors, researchers can better understand why attempts at post-conflict reconstruction are less successful in some cases than others. Doing so deepens our understanding of the conditions and complex dynamics that can constrain the discrete, instrumental, and individual level development efforts. This provides an opportunity for sociologists to contribute to the scholarship and debates on contemporary warmaking and wartime developmentda conversation from which sociology has largely been absentdwhile also disaggregating, and in the processes enriching, the sociological study of war and conflict. 7.1. Local “hearts and minds” dynamics The analysis has traced how actors' views of others are constructed in a wartime setting; how these views constrain the post-conflict reconstruction process; and, finally, the consequences of such constraints. It does so in the framework of two expectations, each supported by the empirical findings. First, the ZPRT's view of local actors changed over time, as the circumstances of their deployment changed. These findings show that while the ZPRT unit may have been influenced by the perspective of previous units deployed to the research sitedas well as the training and pre-deployment views of its personneldit generated its own impressions of local actors over time. However, the possibilities for change in response equivalence were bounded. In other words, while the ZPRT shifted its understanding of local actors, its evolving views followed a roughly constrained trend. Namely, response equivalence remained highest over time with actors comprising the more general category of local formal officials. For example, the ZPRT initially viewed government administrators as having the most in common with itself (Fig. 2) and when this changed it later viewed the local chief executive as being more similar (Fig. 4). These findings of the textual analysis are supported by the

32 33 34

Interview, 25 December 2014. Interview, 23 December 2014. Interview, 28 December 2014.

Please cite this article in press as: Karell, D., Local peace and contemporary conflict: Constructing commonality and exclusion during war in Afghanistan, Social Science Research (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ssresearch.2016.07.002

18

D. Karell / Social Science Research xxx (2016) 1e23

interviews with residents; they frequently noted how US military forces primarily cultivated relationships with specific government officials and community leaders rather than the broader populace. Second, the interview data indicate that those actors with whom US military actors developed “trusted networks” enjoyed disproportionally greater benefits compared to their neighbors. These data, however, also suggest more widespread consequences. The process by which foreign development actors understand similarity between themselves and local actors and build their networks can delegitimize them in the eyes of local non-elite residents. In addition, inequity in benefits and resulting feelings of exclusion among segments of local communities can combine to delegitimize foreign actors and their attempts to win hearts and minds. The analysis is not without limitations. First, largely due to the scope of the paper, the types of ties that actors shared (or did not have in common) during given events remains under-analyzed. Examining the variation in responses dependent on specific kinds of contexts would require a distinct analysis than the one promised here, but it points towards a promising direction for future research. Such work, possibly employing the methodology developed in this paper, would center on exploring the conflict- and post-conflict situations that elicit certain types of responses from various local actors. Doing so would shed light on when and how local actors are drawn together or fractured. Second, chiefly due to the difficulties presented by an insecure research site this paper proposes, but cannot prove, a causal process linking variations and continuities in response equivalence to inequality and exclusion within that community. While the study made use of the accessible materialdtextual reports and interviews in a nearby sitedfuture work could draw on similar textual data from more secure sites or conduct interviews once security has improved. Indeed, a goal of this study has been to introduce a novel methodological approach enabling researchers to systematize and analyze a large amount of textual data while still capturing the local-level interactional dynamics in conflict settings. Combining this with interviews at the research site at regular intervals could shed much needed light on the long-term consequences of conflict- and post-conflict activities. A final limitation is the inability to explore the diversity of perspectives and understandings within the ZPRT. That is, while differences among PRT members likely played a role in how actors in Zabul interacted, the current study treats the ZPRT as a unified organizational actor. This limitation is mitigated by two aspects of the data and case. First, how the reports are constructeddaggregated from daily reports by each sub-unit by three authorsdsuggests that the reports portray, as much as possible, the general view of the organization. Second, the reports influenced how the PRT's leadership understood the local socio-political landscape, thereby affecting how they shaped the personnel's perspectives and behavior in subsequent interaction. In other words, the relative hierarchy and discipline in an organization like a PRT lends confidence that its personnel understood and interacted with the local populace with greater inter-organizational consistency than other types of organizations. Future work, however, should examine how diversity among individuals and sub-units shapes the interactions of a combat and development organizations with local actors.35 More broadly, further research could examine the processes by which types of individuals that are often drawn into fighting wars and experiencing combat (Kestnbaum, 2005). 7.2. Sociology, war, and post-conflict development The analysis indicates that external actors' local-level wartime development and reconstruction efforts in contexts such as Afghanistan are rife with self-imposed constraints. Namely, despite the universalist implication embedded in the phrase “winning hearts and minds,” military-development units like the ZPRT build relationships with and direct resources to only a subset of local actors. Moreover, these actors are likely to be the government officials or local notables that the military unit has already been tasked with supporting or have made more influential through their collaboration. In other words, the activities of military units win the hearts and minds of actors who are already allies. Such explanations for how and why local-level wartime dynamics unfold are typically overlooked by much of the policy and academic literature on counterinsurgency and wartime development and reconstruction. However, the perceptions of actors and their resultant actions have implications for current conceptualizations of asymmetrical warmaking. For example, scholarly research that adopts the information-sharing model for linking aid and violence reduction (Berman et al., 2011; Berman and Matanock, 2015) does not account for instances in which military units may only be willing or able to build trust with some segments of the local populace, often those who are, again, already allies. Consequently, the military unit would receive information only from that set of actors, who are likely to only have information of a limited scope, not to mention specific personal, political, and social interests biasing the information. In addition, the inadvertent exclusion of some residents suggests that the interactions among local actors may ultimately engender violence (Wimmer, 2002; Buhaug et al., 2008; Wimmer et al., 2009; Cederman et al., 2013)dan endogenous process largely divorced from original causes that, partly because of its endogeneity, has often been ignored by current theories of aid and conflict. These challenges to existing models of winning hearts and minds illustrate how a sociological framework can lead to much-needed contributions to the study of contemporary warmaking and wartime development, areas largely ceded to political scientists and economists (Wimmer, 2014). One avenue of future research could use sociological approaches to explore the social construction of conflict zones. For example, the present analysis uses the notion of response equivalence to explore how various actors' perceptions, relationships, and shared understandings emerge and change. Doing so can help to

35 Related research often focuses on examining how internal diversity affects the efficacy of such organizations, rather than its relationships with various segments of the local populace (Piiparinen, 2007).

Please cite this article in press as: Karell, D., Local peace and contemporary conflict: Constructing commonality and exclusion during war in Afghanistan, Social Science Research (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ssresearch.2016.07.002

D. Karell / Social Science Research xxx (2016) 1e23

19

uncover the complex, relational, and endogenous dynamics that shape how a wide range of actors participate in conflict and, in turn, generate new alignments of social relationships, with varied consequences for both the armed conflict and society. A second avenue for contributions rests on the opportunity to turn from the typical approach in the sociological of war and conflictdhistorical, large, and slow-moving processesdand disaggregate conflicts to uncover the heterogeneity in the sociopolitical landscape and social mechanisms. For example, the findings presented here encourage future research in the sociology of war literature to recognize the local population as consisting of various segments, each with distinct and dynamic relationships with other segments that change over time. Similarly, moments of conflict should not be uniformly conceptualized; their effects reach various population segments differently at any given moment. Finally, general sociological approaches to studying social phenomena such as inequality, stratification, and local-level €bl (2013) have argued, group boundaries can also benefit from greater attention to conflict settings. While, as Joas and Kno sociological theories aiming to explain a wide range of social conditions frequently “suppress” the generative role of war, the preceding analysis suggests that periods of conflict can be critical moments that reshape social structures, whether upending existing systems of stratification or reinforcing existing inequalities. This suggests that as sociologists of war increasingly turn their attention to local-level conflict settings, existing general sociological theories will likely find fertile grounds for further development and expansion. Funding sources This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors. Acknowledgements The author thanks Katherine Stovel, Steve Pfaff, Noah Coburn, and Greg Hooks who provided advice at early stages of this project. I am particularly indebted to Stephanie Lee, who provided methodological advice, and Elisabeth Anderson and Swethaa Ballakrishnen, who were kind enough to comment on later drafts of the article. I also thank the participants of the 2013 Comparative Historical-Political Sociology Mini-Conference held at Columbia University and the University of Washington’s Seminar on Organizational, Political, and Economic Sociology. Finally, I thank the outstanding reviewers, who helped refocus and sharpen the argument. All responsibility for errors remain with the author. Appendix A. Descriptive statistics of dataset

Table A.5 Interactions between actors. Total occurrences of interactions

N

ZPRT with all other actor categories Provincial Governor with all other actor categories Residents with all other actor categories Contractors with all other actor categories Line Ministries with all other actor categories Central Administration with all other actor categories Provincial Judiciary with all other actor categories Elders with all other actor categories District Administrations with all other actor categories Central Security with all other actor categories Mullahs with any all other actor categories

416 220 214 165 138 108 104 76 66 39 25

Table A.6 Ties between Actors. Total occurrences of ties

N

Interaction Attention paid to non-present actor Collaboration Negative or critical sentiment Positive or cordial sentiment Displeasure Action Decisive decision-making Indecisive decision-making Self-critical Corruption Total

529 507 373 259 202 201 187 136 39 27 20 2480

Please cite this article in press as: Karell, D., Local peace and contemporary conflict: Constructing commonality and exclusion during war in Afghanistan, Social Science Research (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ssresearch.2016.07.002

20

D. Karell / Social Science Research xxx (2016) 1e23

Appendix B. Scree, Shepard, and 3D Plots of MDS Findings

Fig. B6. Scree, Shepard, and 3D Plots for Period 1 (Weeks 1 through 4).

Fig. B7. Scree, Shepard, and 3D Plots for Period 2 (Weeks 5 through 8).

Fig. B8. Scree, Shepard, and 3D Plots for Period 3 (Weeks 9 through 12).

Please cite this article in press as: Karell, D., Local peace and contemporary conflict: Constructing commonality and exclusion during war in Afghanistan, Social Science Research (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ssresearch.2016.07.002

D. Karell / Social Science Research xxx (2016) 1e23

21

Fig. B9. Scree, Shepard, and 3D Plots for Period 4 (Weeks 13 through 16).

Fig. B10. Scree, Shepard, and 3D Plots for Period 5 (Weeks 17 through 19).

Fig. B11. Scree, Shepard, and 3D Plots for Period 6 (Weeks 20 through 22).

Please cite this article in press as: Karell, D., Local peace and contemporary conflict: Constructing commonality and exclusion during war in Afghanistan, Social Science Research (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ssresearch.2016.07.002

22

D. Karell / Social Science Research xxx (2016) 1e23

Fig. B12. Scree, Shepard, and 3D Plots for Period 7 (Weeks 23 through 26).

References Adams, G., 2015. Honing the proper edge: cerp and the two-sided potential of military-led development in afghanistan. Econ. Peace Secur. 10 (2), 53e60. Allport, G., 1954. The Nature of Prejudice. Addison-Wesley, Reading, MA. Azoy, W., 2013. Local Politics in Afghanistan. Columbia University Press, New York, pp. 92e110. Ch. Reputation, Violence, and Buzkashi. Barfield, T., 2010. Afghanistan: a Cultural and Political History. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ. Barfield, T., Nojumi, N., 2010. Bringing more effective governance to Afghanistan: 10 pathways to stability. Middle East Policy 17 (4), 40e52. Bearman, P., Faris, R., Moody, J., 1999. Blocking the future: new solutions for old problems in historical social science. Soc. Sci. Hist. 23 (4), 501e533. Bearman, P., Stovel, K., 2000. Becoming a nazi: a model for narrative networks. Poetics 27, 69e90. Berman, E., Felter, J., Shapiro, J., Troland, E., 2013. Modest, secure, and informed: successful development in conflict zones. Am. Econ. Rev. Pap. Proc. 103 (3), 512e517. Berman, E., Matanock, A., 2015. The empiricists' insurgency. Annu. Rev. Political Sci. 18, 443e464. Berman, E., Shapiro, J., Felter, J., 2011. Can hearts and minds be bought? the economics of counterinsurgency in Iraq. J. Political Econ. 119 (4), 766e819. € hnke, J.R., Zürcher, C., 2013. Aid, minds, and hearts: the impact of aid in conflict zones. Confl. Manag. Peace Sci. 30 (5), 411e432. Bo Borg, I., Groenen, P., 2005. Modern Multidimensional Scaling, second ed. Springer, New York. Breiger, R., 1974. The duality of persons and groups. Soc. Forces 53 (2), 181e190. Buhaug, H., Cederman, L.-E., Rød, J.K., 2008. Disaggregating ethno-nationalist civil wars: a dyadic test of exclusion theory. Int. Organ. 62 (3), 531e551. Burde, D., 2012. Assessing impact and bridging methodological divides: randomized trials in countries affected by conflict. Comp. Educ. Rev. 56 (3), 448e473. Cederman, L.-E., Gleditsch, K.S., Buhaug, H., 2013. Inequality, Grievances, and Civil War. Cambridge University Press, New York. Child, T., 2014. Hearts and minds cannot be bought: ineffective reconstruction in Afghanistan. Econ. Peace Secur. 9 (2), 43e49. Chou, T., 2012. Does development assistance reduce violence?: Evidence from Afghanistan. Econ. Peace Secur. 7 (2), 5e13. Coburn, N., 2011. Bazaar Politics: Power and Pottery in an Afghan Market Town. Stanford University Press, Stanford, CA. Collier, P., Hoeffler, A., 2004. Greed and grievance in civil war. Oxf. Econ. Pap. 56 (4), 563e595. Crost, B., Felter, J., Johnston, P., 2014. Aid under fire: development projects and civil conflict. Am. Econ. Rev. 103 (104), 1833e1856. de Beer, A., 2012. Snapshots of an Intervention. The Unlearned Lessons of Afghanistan's Decade of Assistance (2001e11). Afghanisan Analysts Network, Ch. Afghanistan's Early Aid Architecture and How it Has Changed. http://aan-afghanistan.com/uploads/14_de_Beer_Afghanistans_Early_Aid_Architecture. pd. DOA, 2006. Counterinsurgency. Tech. Rep. FM 3e24, Department of the Army, Washington, D.C. http://usacac.army.mil/cac2/Repository/Materials/COINFM3-24.pdf. DOD, January 2009. Progress toward Security and Stability in Afghanistan. Tech. rep., United States Department of Defense. http://www.defense.gov/pubs/ october_1230_final.pdf. DOD, 11 November 2011. Management Improvements Needed in Commander's Emergency Response Program in Afghanistan. Tech. rep., Department of Defense Inspector General. http://www.dodig.mil/audit/reports/fy12/DODIG-2012-023.pdf. Fishstein, P., Wilder, A., 2012. Winning Hearts and Minds? Examining the Relationship between Aid and Security in Afghanistan. Tech. rep.. Feinstein International Center http://fic.tufts.edu/assets/WinningHearts-Final.pdf. Goffman, E., 1959. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Doubleday, New York. Goffman, E., 1961. Encounters. The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc., Indianapolis, IN. Gould, R., 1996. Patron-client ties, state centralization, and the whiskey rebellion. Am. J. Sociol. 102 (2), 400e429. Gould, R., 2003. Collision of Wills. University of Chicago Press, Chicago. Horne, N., 2012. Snapshots of an Intervention. The Unlearned Lessons of Afghanistan's Decade of Assistance (2001e11). Afghanisan Analysts Network, Ch. Throwing Money at the Problem: US PRTs in Afghanistan. http://aan-afghanistan.com/uploads/16_Horne_Throwing_Money_at_the_Problem.pdf. Huang, A., 2008. Similarity measures for text document clustering. N. Z. Comput. Sci. Res. Conf. http://favi.com.vn/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/pg049_ Similarity_Measures_for_Text_Document_Clustering.pdf. ISAF, 2010. Isaf Provincial Reconstruction Team (Prt) Handbook. Tech. rep., International Security Assistance Force. https://info.publicintelligence.net/ISAFPRThandbook.pdf. €bl, W., 2013. War in Social Thought. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ. Joas, H., Kno Kalyvas, S., 2006. The Logic of Violence in Civil War. Cambridge University Press, New York. Karell, D., 2015. Aid, power, and grievances: lessons for war and peace from rural afghanistan. Econ. Peace Secur. 10 (2), 43e52. Kestnbaum, M., 2005. Remaking Modernity. Duke University Press, Durham, NC, pp. 249e285. Ch. Mars Revealed: The Entry of Ordinary People into War among States. Kruskal, J., 1964. Multidimensional scaling by optimizing goodness of fit to a nonmetric hypothesis. Psychometrika 29, 1e27. Lake, D., 2010. The practice and theory of us statebuilding. J. Intervention Statebuilding 4 (3), 257e284. Leydesdorff, L., 2008. On the normalization and visualization of author co-citation data: Salton's cosine versus the jaccard index. J. Am. Soc. Inf. Sci. Technol. 59 (1), 77e85. Lyall, J., Blair, G., Imai, K., 2013. Explaining support for combatants during wartime: a survey experiment in afghanistan. Am. Political Sci. Rev. 107 (4), 679e705. Malkasian, C., 2013. War Comes to Garmser. Oxford University Press, New York. Martin, M., 2014. An Intimate War: an Oral History of the Helmand Conflict. Oxford University Press, New York.

Please cite this article in press as: Karell, D., Local peace and contemporary conflict: Constructing commonality and exclusion during war in Afghanistan, Social Science Research (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ssresearch.2016.07.002

D. Karell / Social Science Research xxx (2016) 1e23

23

Merton, R., 1936. The unanticipated consequences of purposive social action. Am. Sociol. Rev. 1 (6), 894e904. Miakhel, S., 2012. Snapshots of an Intervention. The Unlearned Lessons of Afghanistan's Decade of Assistance (2001e11). Afghanisan Analysts Network, Ch. A Brief Overview of the Afghanistan Stabilisation Program: a National Program to Improve Security and Governance. http://aan-afghanistan.com/ uploads/7_Miakhel_A_Brief_Overview_of_the_ASP.pdf. € Ozerdem, A., Lee, S.Y., 2015. Local Ownership in International Peacekeeping. Routledge, New York, pp. 1e16. Ch. Introduction. Pajhwok News, 9 November 2013. Govt Fails to Implement Development Projects in Zabul: Residents. Pajhwok Afghan News. http://www.elections. pajhwok.com/en/content/govt-fails-implement-development-projects-zabul-residents. Piiparinen, T., 2007. A clash of mindsets? an insider's account of provincial reconstruction teams. Int. Peacekeeping 14 (1), 143e157. Portes, A., 2000. The hidden abode: sociology as analysis of the unexpected. Am. Sociol. Rev. 65 (1), 1e18. Rabinowitz, G.B., 1975. An introduction to nonmetric multidimensional scaling. Am. J. Political Sci. 19 (2), 343e390. Richmond, O., 2014. Failed Statebuilding. Yale University Press, New Haven, CT. Rutting, T., 2012. The Failure of Airborne Democracy: the Bonn Agreement and Afghanistan's Stagnating Democratisation. in: Snapshots of an Intervention. The Unlearned Lessons of Afghanistan's Decade of Assistance (2001e11). Afghanistan Analysts Network. http://aan-afghanistan.com/index.asp? id¼2853. Schetter, C., 2013. Local Politics in Afghanistan. Columbia University Press, New York, pp. 265e274. Ch. Trajectories of Local Politics in Afghanistan. Shinoda, H., 2015. Local Ownership in International Peacekeeping. Routledge, New York, pp. 19e38. Ch. Local Ownership as a Strategic Guidline for Peacebuilding. Smith, T., 2007. Narrative boundaries and the dynamics of ethnic conflict and conciliation. Poetics 35 (1), 22e46. START, 2015. Global Terrorism Database. Tech. rep., National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism. http://www.start.umd.edu/ gtd. Suhrke, A., 2007. Reconstruction as modernization: the “post-conflict” project in afghanistan. Third World Q. 28 (7), 1291e1308. Theissen, C., 2015. Local Ownership in International Peacekeeping. Routledge, New York, pp. 96e115. Ch. The Dilemmas of Local Ownership of Upper-Level and Grassroots Peace Processes in Afghanistan. USFOR-Afghanistan, 2009. Money as a Weapons System Afghanistan. Tech. rep., Operation Enduring Freedom U.S. Forces-Afghanistan. https://info. publicintelligence.net/MAAWS-A.pdf. Wasserman, S., Faust, K., 1994. Social Network Analysis: Methods and Applications. Cambridge University Press, New York. White, H., Boorman, S., Breiger, R., 1976. Social structure from multiple networks. i. blockmodels of roles and positions. Am. J. Sociol. 81 (4), 730e780. Wimmer, A., 2002. Nationalist Exclusion and Ethnic Conflicts: Shadows of Modernity. Cambridge University Press, New York. Wimmer, A., 2014. War. Annual sociological review, 40, 172e197. Wimmer, A., Cederman, L.-E., Min, B., 2009. Ethnic politics and armed conflict: a configurational analysis of a new global dataset. Am. Sociol. Rev. 74 (2), 316e337. World Bank, July 2007. Service Delivery and Governance at the Sub-national Level in Afghanistan. Tech. rep.. World Bank http://siteresources.worldbank. org/SOUTHASIAEXT/Resources/Publications/448813-1185293547967/4024814-1185293572457/report.pdf. €rmer, N., 2012. The Networks of Kunduz: a History of Conflict and Their Actors, from 1992 to 2001. Afghanistan Analysts Network August 2. http://aanWo afghanistan.com/uploads/20120801Woermer-The_Networks_of_Kunduz_FINAL.pdf. Zaeef, A.S., 2010. My Life with the Taliban. Columbia University Press, New York.

Please cite this article in press as: Karell, D., Local peace and contemporary conflict: Constructing commonality and exclusion during war in Afghanistan, Social Science Research (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ssresearch.2016.07.002