ABSTRACT
The introduction allows the reader to grasp the reflective and critical lens through which the book explains how different stories of Afghanistan are constructed, and how those stories unravel when held up against the everyday reality of security, development, and violence in the context of the post 9/11 international intervention in Afghanistan. It elaborates on the conceptual and epistemological framing of the book and the methodological approach that was adopted. It begins by detailing the events that took place in the post-Cold War era that led to a shift in the international response to conflict management, and the explicit merging of security and development, known as the security–development nexus, which sits at the root of liberal peacebuilding and international intervention. This chapter then moves on to outline ‘the everyday’ as an important analytical lens to understand intervention and to explain why ‘the story’ is used as a frame to understand the events the book. The introduction concludes by detailing the methodological approach used to conduct the research study and outlines the structure of the chapters that follow.
