Coercion and capital in afghanistan: The rise, transformation and fall of the afghan commercial security sector1

This chapter highlights the extent to which the Afghan conflict has become the backcloth of economic transactions and processes of accumulation. A claim often made with regards to commercial security in Afghanistan is that it has led to political fragmentation through the proliferation of criminalised warlords prospering at the political periphery. The transform Afghan society and lend credence to the idea of an Afghan war-system’, a social system that is so much shaped by war that it has become dependent on the latter for its own perpetuation. the notion of a market’ of military services in Afghanistan is contestable if it is to be understood as a sphere in which economic relations override political ones, the law of supply and demand prevails over coercive power and the private’ is clearly separate from the public’. The Afghan example highlights the inter-linkages between economic, political and coercive power: the private security-market’ is inseparable from political networks and violent struggles over state power.SCOPUS: ch.b