ABSTRACT
Drawing upon poststructuralist theoretical–philosophical insights, this chapter critically analyses the U.S. War on Terror (WoT) and state-building discourses in Afghanistan. It argues that the U.S. discourses on War on Terror and state-building in Afghanistan under four presidents, Bush, Obama, Trump, and Biden, constitute a concatenation making them unified, inseparable, and part of a continued policy in Afghanistan, hence functioning as one grand, hegemonic discourse. The discursive process of identifying and framing al Qaeda and the Taliban as evil, barbarian, and anti-freedom is what I see as part of the depoliticization of the conflict, which has had serious consequences. The chapter asserts that the U.S. discourse laid the foundations of what is termed as the politics of confinement during Bush's rule. It demonstrates the expansion of the politics and spaces of confinement beyond Afghan borders and notes the rise of necropolitics. I argue that the politics of confinement and necropower/necropolitics go hand in hand in states and societies under protracted conflict or war. Biden's abrupt drawdown of troops from Afghanistan, I argue, ended the occupation, but it did not lead to the liberation of Afghanistan.
