How the EU Practiced the Security-Development Nexus in Afghanistan: A Critical Reflection

With the official end of the combat mission in Afghanistan in 2014 it is timely to reflect on the EU's practices to help bring peace, security, and development to Afghanistany. The so-called  security-development nexus in international peacebuilding has been rediscovered after 9/11 by a broad range of scholars in oder to understand (and prevent) state fragility and causes of civil conflict more generally. However, while being firmly integrated in Western political documents, such as the national security strategies and policy documents (see e.g. European Security Strategy 2003) the causal, empirical, theoretical, and practical connecting points of the nexus are less well understood. This paper tries to fill this gap and to analyzes ex post the EU's dynamics, driving forces, and intermingling effects of development and security practices in Afghanistan from 2001-2014. Such investigation also has policy implications as policy makers need to know whether security oriented development policies or development oriented security policies are needed in international statebuilding efforts.

Specifically, the paper attemps to (1) theorize development practices as a specific tactic of intervention to facilitate political support of a target population, and (2) changes in the conceptual understanding of military and development practices as well as civil-military relations this has brought about. To this end, the paper aims to draw a clear picture of how the EU's development policies and programming have evolved in conjunction with and in reaction to the changing security environment in Afghanistan