Human Security in Afghanistan

Human Security is an emerging paradigm for understanding global vulnerabilities. While challenging the traditional notion of national security it argues that the proper referent for security should be the individual rather than the state. Defined as the protection of the vital core of all human lives in ways that enhance human freedoms and fulfillment, Human Security also means protecting people from critical and pervasive threats and situations. It is often ignored that Human Security threats like poverty, unemployment and disease, which remain an important cause of insecurity and are connected to bigger problems like terrorism, insurgency, arms, and drugs trafficking, are therefore crucial for stability. This connect makes the paradigm of Human Security relevant in the context of Afghanistan. This book argues that Human Security provides the conceptual bridge capable of linking military tactics with the broader strategic objectives pursued by the international community in Afghanistan. Application of the principles of human security may be a means by which the deficiencies of past military practice can be redressed, and this will likely result in greater success for state-building, reconstruction, and counterinsurgency aspects of the Afghan mission. The book argues favourably for developing a Human Security regime in South Asia where the institutions created on specific issues could be secular (not based on primordial identities) and temporary, and thus would never jeopardize the legitimacy of the state. Further, accountable functioning of the functional institutions would add strength to the nation-states ability to deliver and would thus facilitate the integration of various primordial identities into the national mainstreams of the nation states they are part of. It is an argument favouring the reconstruction of an alternative notion of security for Afghanistan in the South Asian Security Paradigm.