ABSTRACT
While the previous chapter outlined the theoretical and conceptual tools to gender population-centric counterinsurgency, the war in Afghanistan did not begin as a counterinsurgency war. In order to show the continuities and discontinuities of counterinsurgency as practiced in Afghanistan it is necessary to understand how the US military became involved in Afghanistan the fi rst place. This chapter therefore tells the gendered story of how the invasion of Afghanistan became legitimised through particular gendered discourses, ones that reverberates and echoes through the later counterinsurgency operations.
