ABSTRACT
This chapter analyzes one particular local policing initiative called village stability operations, introduced into the countryside of Afghanistan by US forces in 2009. It examines not only Donald Bolduc's assertions on the power of culture, but what such power means for comprehending and controlling rural sectors in parts of Afghanistan. In Afghanistan and Iraq, the US military has repeatedly invoked establishing 'security' as the first step in creating the conditions for nominally democratic economic and political institutions to develop. The turn to 'tribal militias' underscores a fundamental tension at the heart of US counterinsurgency doctrine, and reveals one of the many ways in which liberal approaches to war produce violent forms of exclusion. As Bayley and Perito argue, 'the key contribution of local police forces is to legimate self-government by responding under the law to the security needs of individual citizens'.
