The Afghan Ministry of Refugees: an unruly trainee in state capacity building

Giulia Scalettaris

Third World Quarterly, 2020, vol. 41, issue 1, 151-167

Abstract: This article looks at the interactions between the officials of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)’s mission in Afghanistan and the heads of the Afghan Ministry of Refugees in the mid-2000s. It examines the rationales that guide officials at both the UNHCR and the ministry, as a way of unpacking the politics of state capacity building in post-2001 Afghanistan. The first section looks at the tense relationship between the two bodies from the point of view of UN officials, who strive to redress a ministry portrayed as ‘incapable’. By looking in turn at the fundaments of the political legitimacy of the Afghan state, at how international intervention transforms the Afghan political arena, and at Afghanistan’s position in global power relations, the following sections identify three rationales that can be ascribed to ministry officials, namely reconciling internal and external state legitimacy, strategic resource tapping and resistance to inter-state hegemony. From its standpoint at the juncture between an ‘external’ and a ‘local’ institution, the article ultimately stresses the importance of gaining epistemological distance from the peace building project in order to consider ‘local’ actors as full political actors.

Date: 2020
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/01436597.2019.1662289 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:ctwqxx:v:41:y:2020:i:1:p:151-167

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/ctwq20

DOI: 10.1080/01436597.2019.1662289

Access Statistics for this article

Third World Quarterly is currently edited by Shahid Qadir

More articles in Third World Quarterly from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().