Afghanistan: Forging Civilizations along the Silk Road. Edited by Joan Aruz and Elisabetta Valtz Fino. The Metropolitan Museum of Art Symposia. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2012. Pp. viii + 134, illus. $35. [Distributed by Yale University Press] Afghanistan: Forging Civilizations along the Silk Road. By Frank L. Holt. Hellenistic Culture and Society, vol. 53. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2012. Pp. xxi + 343, illus. $39.95.

This paper contributes to the literature of case studies about doing business in conflict zones and post-conflict zones by presenting the details of holding an international tender process in Afghanistan. The potential importance of Aynak to Afghanistan's economy is explained. The tender plan, rights offered, expectations and bid evaluation process for awarding the right to develop the Aynak copper deposit in Afghanistan are described in detail. This paper shows how an equitable, transparent, objective, standards-based process approach, incorporating (...) technically and socially responsible development requirements, may be adopted and implemented in countries with difficult conditions. (shrink)

This paper contributes to the literature of case studies about doing business in conflict zones and post‐conflict zones by presenting the details of holding an international tender process in Afghanistan. The potential importance of Aynak to Afghanistan's economy is explained. The tender plan, rights offered, expectations and bid evaluation process for awarding the right to develop the Aynak copper deposit in Afghanistan are described in detail. This paper shows how an equitable, transparent, objective, standards‐based process approach, incorporating (...) technically and socially responsible development requirements, may be adopted and implemented in countries with difficult conditions. (shrink)

How should we think about justice at war’s end in the case of Afghanistan in 2022 and beyond? The basic principles of jus post bellum include order, justice, and conciliation; and there have been numerous policy attempts to realize these principles since the fall of the Taliban and flight of al Qaeda in December 2001. With the precipitous abandonment of Afghanistan by the Biden Administration and other allies in 2021, we have a sober opportunity to reflect on three (...) periods of jus post bellum efforts: an initial humanitarian and human security phase ; the surprising resilience of the Taliban and efforts at some sort of national grand bargain circa the 10-year mark ; and now a future based upon Western withdrawal and the re-emerging dominance of the Taliban. (shrink)

Against the backdrop of the massive carnage of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, this article examines the institution of conscientious objection and the treatment of conscientious objectors. It concludes that while the number of objectors discharged from the US military in the two wars was small, the issues of conscience they articulated resonated widely through the ranks. This article seeks to make available their experience as a resource to inform the broader ongoing debate about the wars and their (...) implications for military ethics. (shrink)

This chapter argues that humanitarian intervention in Afghanistan provided much needed legitimacy to US military actions which were undertaken for partly humanitarian reasons. Operation Enduring Freedom, like most incidents claimed as humanitarian intervention, displayed a range of intentions — some genuine, some asserted, others claimed after the fact. It showed a recognition on the part of the acting state that such intervention cannot be purely military in character to be effective.

The US invasion of Afghanistan, with backing from NATO and from Australia, took place in October 2001, in response to the 9/11 attacks. As of July 2010 many US and European commentators are saying that the US action in Afghanistan has failed and that US forces should withdraw. Similarly, Australian commentators are saying that Australian troops should withdraw. I haven't made up my mind and don't even see clearly what the issues are. But here are some reflections and (...) some references to commentators. (shrink)

Some of the questions Professor Miller addresses are concerned with proportionality, a notion whose complexities are only beginning to be appreciated. My modest ambition in this comment is to try to sharpen these questions and provide some assistance in thinking about them.

Women-led political organizations that employ feminist and nationalist ideologies and operate as separate from, rather than associated with, male-dominated or patriarchal nationalist groups are both significant and under-explored areas of gender, feminist, and nationalism studies. This article investigates the feminist and nationalist vision of the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA). RAWA exemplifies an effective political movement that intersects feminist and nationalist politics, where women are active, rather than symbolic, participants within the organization, and help to shape (...) an ideological construction of the Afghan nation. RAWA subsequently links its struggle for women's rights (through feminism) with its nationalist goals for democracy and secularism. This article also analyses RAWA's use of conservative nationalist methods to reproduce the future of the organization and to develop ‘citizens’ for its idealized nation, while countering existing patriarchal social and familial structures through a re-configuration of women's roles in the family, community, and nation. This inquiry is based on geographic and feminist examinations of RAWA's organizational structure, literature, and political goals obtained through content analyses of RAWA's political literature and through interviews with RAWA members and supporters living as refugees in Pakistan in the summer of 2003 and winter of 2004/05. RAWA is an instructive example of counter-patriarchal and nationalist feminist politics that questions patriarchal definitions of the nation and its citizenry by reconfiguring gender norms and redefining gender relations in the family as a mirror of the nation. (shrink)

In this short article I call into question the view that the current United States war in Afghanistan is a war of necessity. In this effort I am primarily engaged with the thought of the famous just war theorist Michael Walzer as it has developed from 1977 until 2009.

The costs to Afghan civilians can only be guessed, but we do know the projections on which policy decisions and commentary were based, a matter of utmost significance. As a matter of simple logic, it is these projections that provide the grounds for any moral evaluation of planning and commentary, or any judgment of appeals to “just war†arguments; and crucially, for any rational assessment of what may lie ahead.

This article argues that women’s human rights were and are being violated in Afghanistan regardless of who governs the country: Kings, secular rulers, Mujahideen or Taliban, or the incumbent internationally backed government of Karzai. The provisions of the new constitution regarding women’s rights are analysed under three categories: neutral, protective and discriminatory. It is argued that the current constitution is a step in the right direction but, far from protecting women’s rights effectively, it requires substantial revamping. The constitutional commitment (...) to international human rights standards seems to be a hallow slogan as the constitution declares Islam as a state religion which clearly conflicts with women’s human rights standards in certain areas. The Constitution has empowered the Supreme Court to review whether human rights instruments are compatible with Islamic legal norms and, in case of conflict, precedence will be given to Islamic law. Keeping this in view, it is argued that Afghanistan’s ratification of the Women’s Convention without reservations has no real significance unless Islamic law dealing with women’s rights is reformed and reconciled with international women’s rights standards. (shrink)

“Fear and I were born twins together,” said Hobbes, alluding to the Spanish armada-borne scare of 1588. The year 2001 birthed a similarly synergistic pair, the attacks of 9/11 and this journal, Jou...

In 1977, French excavations at Aï Khanoum in north-east Afghanistan—a foundation of Antiochus I Sotēr and subsequently one of the major cities of the Greco-Bactrian kingdom—of a building dating to shortly before the destruction of the place in 145 b.c.e. uncovered inter alia the remains of a papyrus and a parchment document. The papyrus text, dated by Cavallo on the basis of its letterforms to the mid third century b.c.e., preserved a fragment of a philosophical dialogue seemingly to be (...) associated with the Peripatetic school. The second document consisted of two separate portions of a piece of parchment roughly assigned on the basis of its letterforms to the second half of the third or the first half of the second century b.c.e.; as also in the case of the papyrus, the letters survived not on the parchment itself but impressed upon the hardened dirt that surrounded it. Only column II of the original editors’ ‘Texte 2a’ contains a significant amount of text, which appears in neither TrGF nor PCG. I present it here without regard to standard editorial niceties, which are rendered impossible by the desperate state of the original document, now almost certainly lost, and the nature of the original publication. (shrink)

I agree with Professor Miller that just war theory is limited when it comes to judging whether and how to end a war. But Miller fails to understand adequately what these limitations are and the extent to which they can be addressed within just war theory.

While the distinction between civilians and combatants is fundamental to international law, it is contested and complicated in practice. How do North Atlantic Treaty Organization officers see civilians in Afghanistan? Focusing on 2009 air strike in Kunduz, this article argues that the professional vision of NATO officers relies not only on recent military technologies that allow for aerial surveillance, thermal imaging, and precise targeting but also on the assumptions, vocabularies, modes of attention, and hierarchies of knowledges that the officers (...) bring to the interpretation of aerial surveillance images. Professional vision is socially situated and frequently contested with communities of practice. In the case of the Kunduz air strike, the aerial vantage point and the military visual technologies cannot fully determine what would be seen. Instead, the officers’ assumptions about Afghanistan, threats, and the gender of the civilian inform the vocabulary they use for coding people and places as civilian or noncivilian. Civilians are not simply “found,” they are produced through specific forms of professional vision. (shrink)

This investigation examines ‘teasing’ of non-combatant children by US military service personnel in occupied Iraq and Afghanistan. The majority of existent investigations of teasing and related practices place significant conceptual importance on the intentions of the teaser – such that a target can understand that the tease is not true. However, in data examined here it appears that targets do not understand the language in which the teasing is undertaken. Drawing from publicly available video footage posted on the video (...) sharing website Liveleak, we provide an ethnomethodological and conversation analytic informed examination of how persons initiating teasing strategically exploit asymmetries in the sequential and preferential organization of interactions when tease recipients do not have sufficient English skills to redress the negative assessments being made of them. Three types of candidate teasing practices are identified: soldier initiated negative other-assessments; target parroting negative other-assessments; and offer-withdrawal games. Analysis examines how such interactions effectively fail as teases and explores how children can resist soldiers’ pursuit of degrading responses. (shrink)

The impact of Islam upon women’s entrepreneurship in conflict zones is woefully absent from the entrepreneurship literature. This is due to the absence of published scholarship about this context rather than the absence of Muslim women’s entrepreneurship there. To address the gap in the literature, we offer a contextualized analysis and contribution by adopting an Islamic feminism lens and explore how Islamic feminism empowers women entrepreneurs and their entrepreneurial activities and behaviours in conflict zones. We argue that Islamic feminism is (...) a process of ‘ijtihad’ shaping the business ethics of Muslim women entrepreneurs operating in conflict zones and removing the traditional, patriarchal, colonial and other cultural layers with which Islam has been veiled. The findings from the 16 Muslim women entrepreneurs operating in Afghanistan, Iraq and Palestine and participating in our study reveal that Islamic religiousness plays a critical role in shaping the Muslim women’s entrepreneurial behaviour and their ability to endure the hardships of living in a conflict zone. Within all three research contexts, the participants interpreted and practiced their Islamic religiousness in ways consistent with Islamic Feminism principles and that deviated from patriarchal Islam dominating their conflict zones. This paper contributes to the growing research areas on Islamic feminist foundations for business ethics and women’s entrepreneurship in conflict zones by exploring how Islamic feminism empowers women entrepreneurs in Muslim conflict zones. (shrink)

Die deutsche Beteiligung am Krieg in Afghanistan zielte erstens darauf ab, in Afghanistan für Demokratie und Menschenrechte zu sorgen; zweitens darauf, an Ort und Stelle für Sicherheit zu sorgen (ohne die kein wirtschaftlicher und gesellschaftlicher Aufbau möglich ist); und drittens darauf, unsere eigene Sicherheit (etwa vor terroristischen Angriffen) zu erhöhen. Diese Ziele sind erstrebenswert – aber es ist mehr als fraglich, ob jemals realistische Aussicht bestand, diese Ziele zu erreichen. Wir haben in Afghanistan nach der optimalen Mischung (...) aus zivilen und militärischen Maßnahmen gesucht – und haben sie nicht gefunden. War die Intervention zum Scheitern verurteilt? Nein; aber zu keinem Zeitpunkt verfügten wir über das für Erfolg erforderliche Wissen. Wir haben versucht, in ein chaotisches System einzugreifen, das sich während der Intervention immer wieder änderte. Wir haben zu langsam dazugelernt, und wir hätten auch kaum schneller lernen können, denn dieser Krieg ist Chaos, also unkontrollierbar (so wie viele andere Kriege auch). Das bedeutet, dass sich die Kriegsbefürworter und -planer maßlos überschätzt haben – technisch, militärisch, politisch, erkenntnistheoretisch und ethisch. Nicht die Pazifisten waren Traumtänzer in der Debatte über den Afghanistan-Krieg. Diese Thesen begründe ich angesichts des Stands der Dinge vom Winter 2010/1. Ich plädiere für einen sofortigen Abzug aus Afghanistan – und für noble Gesten gegenüber den Afghanen, die an unserer Seite Kopf & Kragen riskiert haben. (shrink)

This paper examines demonic agency and epistemology in the thought of Augustine. When Augustine claims that demons can “work miracles,” he means this in a specific sense: the actions and intelligence of demons are only miraculous from the standpoint of humans, whose powers of perception and action are limited in relation to those of demons. The character of demons’ bodies and the length of their lives provide abilities beyond what humans possess, but, as natural, created beings, demons adhere to the (...) physical rules of nature. Demons possess neither supernatural powers, nor perfect knowledge. Just as our wonder ceases when we are shown how a magic trick is executed, human astonishment makes way for rational understanding once we comprehend demonic nature. (shrink)