ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), from the advent of the United States (US)-led military surge ordered in 2009 through the drawdown of those forces and the handover of security responsibility to Afghan forces at the end of 2014. This period marked the most intense military activity and conflict-related violence in Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban in 2001. While UNAMA has been a highly scrutinised and politically complicated mission, it came now under intense political pressure to support US-led counterinsurgency efforts. As this pressure increased, and security continued to deteriorate, the gap between UNAMA’s mandate and its ability to deliver on those objectives widened. Moreover, and particularly during this period, the international intervention incentivised behaviours that actively sabotaged the prospects for stability and democratic governance. This chapter explores the formal and informal processes, competing narratives and divergent interests UNAMA found itself situated within. It also highlights the faulty assumptions underpinning UNAMA’s mandate, and how those constrained the mission’s ability to engage meaningfully with the real politics of the intervention. The chapter concludes by asking what, if anything, the mission could have done differently to bring about another political outcome in Afghanistan.
