Winning Hearts and Minds? Examining the Relationship between Aid and Security in Afghanistan

Political and security objectives have always influenced U.S. foreign assistance policies and priorities. Since 9/11, however, development aid for countries like Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan has increasingly and explicitly been militarized and subsumed into the national security agenda. In the U.S. as well as in other western nations, the re-structuring of aid programs to reflect the prevailing foreign policy agenda of confronting global terrorism has had a major impact on development strategies, priorities, and structures.

The widely held assumption in military and foreign policy circles that development assistance is an important “soft power” tool to win consent for the presence of foreign troops in potentially hostile areas, and to promote stabilization and security objectives, assumes a relationship between poverty and insecurity that is shared by many in the development and humanitarian community.