ABSTRACT
The signaling function of the deployment of Female Engagement Teams (FET), and the access provided to journalists covering their efforts, was directed at audiences in Afghanistan, as well as at citizens of the US and allied countries in the hope that all would continue to join in supporting the War on Terror. To illustrate how this function, and why developing more nuanced gendered understandings of the War on Terror is important. This chapter focuses on material originally published in 2012 as Gendering Counterinsurgency in Afghanistan. Purporting to fight the spread of communism, the US began covert operations after the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979. The actions of the US and her partners resulted in a war economy based on illicit drugs and the arms trade, as well as a climate of generalized lawlessness. The War on Terror narrative, relies on familiar colonial and Orientalist tropes, including the feminist war frame that supports saving brown women from brown men.
