Conflict Management, Extractive Industries and the 2014 International Military Exit Strategy in Afghanistan

In 2014, while the international military could support and justify their exit strategy by citing a fragile peace at the national level, at the local level competition over resources led to increasing violence and instability. Nowhere is this more visible than Afghanistan's extractive industry where powerful individuals and networks vie for access and control of valuable resources. Donors such as the US military have attempted to partner with these sub-national actors in a bid to manage conflict and ensure state stability/order (or more accurately, the facade of stability). The international assistance financially empowered key regional commanders; this enabled the latter to consolidate power within the state at sub-national level. Inadvertently, this approach reinforced the Taliban's own strategy of generating local revenue from the drug/extractive economies. linking the different levels of economic and violent interaction (local, sub-national, national, and international), detailed analysis of key resources can help identify shifts in power relationships within and between networks. Identifying who controls commodities and exchange, as well as the means of violence that determine the distribution of profits, can shed light on trends in the relationship between war economies, conflict onset and persistence, and even state (in)stability