Remote Management as Risk Management: Enclavisation in Afghanistan

The paper presents an analysis of ‘state-building’ intervention and civil-military practice in the context of global terrorist-related and conflict-related risk. The paper is based on qualitative field research conducted in Afghanistan, and in particular focuses on the international intervention as ‘risk management’, at two levels. The paper first considers ‘state-building’ intervention as management of the global risk of terrorism, or of conflict-related regional instability as continuous with global terrorism. At the level of everyday practice, the paper considers the intervention operations of both civil and military organisations as in part driven by management of the risks of operating in a high-risk environment. In this the paper brings together Shaw’s concept of risk warfare (2005) on the military side with Duffield’s concept of the fortification of development aid (2010) on the civil side. Practice in both cases converges on a risk-averse model of intervention emphasising ‘enclavisation’ and remote management, with extensive and expensive devolution of implementation to local and private contractors on the civil side, continuous with use of private contractors and local proxies on the military side. Evidence for egalitarian distribution of risk, a condition central to sociological models of risk such as ‘risk society’, is limited. Risk-averse ‘enclavised’ intervention operates as a transfer of risk to local and civil populations, whether as inadvertent civilian casualties of military operations, or as populations excluded from, or marginalised in, urban spaces that have become enclaves for international organisations. This model of intervention is potentially counter-productive, as it increases local conditions of insecurity and instability, and questionably cost-effective, owing to the significant expense of the apparatus of ‘enclavisation’ and remote management, notably for infrastructure and private security provision. The paper concludes by considering possibilities for a less risk-averse and more locally owned model of intervention in conflict-prone spaces such as Afghanistan.