At the Expense of the Country: Multi-level War Economy in Afghanistan and the Implication for Peace

The present study systematically examines Afghanistan war economy and its impact on the achievement of peace by using the New Wars theory. Several levels of war commercialization in Afghanistan are identified that are at Governmental, non-Governmental, and global levels, each, contributes to the war commercialization in their own ways based on their interests. These levels are interdependent and that disrupting in one level can lead to disruption of the others. Besides, there are two types of commercialization regarding the security situation identified as Business of Security and Business of Insecurity in which the level is introduced. It turned out that such complexity and entanglement could be a serious obstacle for achieving peace in Afghanistan because all the parties have defined their realization of their interest in maintaining the status quo and spreading lawlessness and unrest in Afghanistan, in a way that even influenced their strategic decisions.