On the Role of the Afghan Police in Statebuilding

This thesis examines the role police played in facilitating statebuilding and more specifically how the disposition of the Afghan police came to challenge the success of statebuilding during the US occupation of the country between 2001 and 2021. I argue that, like the unresolved nature of state-society relations typically found under conflict conditions, the disposition of the Afghan police also remained unresolved rendering the policeman torn between his preexisting identification with local society and his evolving identification with the state. For Bourdieu, the policeman experienced split habitus or habitus clivé because his ‘conditions of existence’ shifted in such a way that his disposition loses coherence. Indeed, he remained in a state of flux – an unreconciled disposition. As a result, a foundational element of state legitimacy and a component of its monopoly on the legitimate use of force (and enforcement) is frustrated, thereby limiting the success of statebuilding.

Following the procedures outlined in existing studies that have applied Bourdieu’s approach to examining political space, I conduct three distinct operations for this study. First, the relationship between the field (society) and the ‘field of power’ (state) is examined. Here I highlight both the history and composition of state-society relations, as well as present day perspectives of this relationship as provided through interviews with state representatives and members of society, including government and local leaders, Afghan security personnel, former mujahidin fighters, and local day laborers. Second, by mapping the social topology of the positions that comprise these fields and their relation to each other – namely that of the competition and negotiation that exists between the state and society. Finally, the disposition of the police, including their strategies, trajectories, and interaction within the constraints and opportunities of the field, is examined with the use of a survey of 1,360 Afghan policemen.