Casualties of Care: A Reflection on Gender, Imperialism and Humanitarian Imaginaries in (Post-) Taliban Afghanistan

Abstract

This article is concerned with the ways in which humanitarian imaginaries in post-9/11 Afghanistan have shaped representations of women’s needs as well as programs designed to answer them. Its aim is to examine the ‘dark side’ of care and the politics of worthiness on which humanitarianism relies. In conversation with scholars who have highlighted the disciplinary aspects of care, I show how apparently well-intentioned humanitarian discourses and practices have drawn boundaries within the Afghan population and reinforced nationalist sentiments. I argue that Orientalist imaginaries of Muslim women in need of rescue did not only serve to justify the military intervention but also the presence of international humanitarian organizations. Furthermore, such colonial fantasies have actualized specific regimes of care based on liberal notions of self-empowerment. The technologies of the ‘self’ on which these programs have relied have overlooked the various forms of structural inequalities responsible for triggering crises in the first place and the broader dynamics of violence and abandonment that have marked the history of the West’s engagement with Afghanistan since the 1990s. The return of the Taliban in 2021 should therefore not solely be understood as the mere result of military strategies and political negotiations but also as the outcome of a broader movement of resistance against this humanitarian ideology, locally perceived as a form of cultural imperialism.