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Zusammenfassung In diesem Forumsbeitrag kommentieren wir die aktuelle Evaluation der Friedens- und Konfliktforschung in Deutschland durch den Wissenschaftsrat als (ehemalige) Vorsitzende der Arbeitsgemeinschaft für Friedens- und Konfliktforschung (AFK e. V.). Wir reflektieren, was die Evaluation aus der Perspektive der AFK für das Forschungsfeld der Friedens- und Konfliktforschung und für den Verband selbst bedeutet. Dazu stellen wir dar, wie die AFK als Fachverband in der Evaluation berücksichtigt wurde. Anschließend beleuchten wir zentrale Themenfelder, die im Evaluationsbericht angesprochen werden: Professionalisierung, die normative Ausrichtung des Forschungsfelds, Interdisziplinarität, Internationalisierung, die Standortfrage, politischer Nutzen, Finanzierung und Nachwuchsförderung. Wir argumentieren, dass die Evaluation eine Gelegenheit für das Forschungsfeld generell und für die AFK im Besonderen darstellt, um über die Stärken und Perspektiven der Friedens- und Konfliktforschung in Deutschland reflektieren und Strategien entwickeln, diese strukturell und institutionell zu sichern und auszubauen. Die AFK als standort- und institutionenübergreifender Fachverband könnte hierbei und als Lobbyorganisation eine wichtige Rolle übernehmen.

Afghanistan has contended with an almost continuous series of foreign interventions in its local affairs in the 19th and 20th centuries. While the resilience of the Afghan population in the face of external influence is widely recognised, how the local populations have dealt with these interventions and how local politics is structured in Afghanistan still remain somewhat open questions. This book sheds light on this phenomenon as well as illuminating the complexities of local politics in Afghanistan, analysing also how the local social order is disturbed or reinforced by outside intervention.

This article deals with the social background and the life worlds of the followers of the Taliban movement. It begins with an analysis of the essential social structures of Pashtun tribal society. It argues that both the Afghan wars, which are ongoing since 1979, and the consequent mass exodus had a tremendous impact on the everyday life of Pashtun society. They resulted in a contextualised confluence of values and norms, rooted in tribal culture on the one side and militant Islam on the other. The policy of the Taliban movement anticipated such normative changes within Pashtun society. Particularly the everlasting reference to Islam, the defence of local autonomy, and the emphasis on social justice emerged as key elements of the self-perception of the Taliban movement. Accordingly, my key argument is that the restoration and maintenance of (idealised) local social orders have been the driving force for the success of the Taliban movement. However, this tendency of preserving an (idealised) local order in the name of Islam is not unique to the Taliban but can be found across the Islamic world and can be regarded as a current phenomenon of globalisation.

Dieser Beitrag beschäftigt sich mit dem sozialen Hintergrund und den Lebenswelten von Anhängern der Taliban-Bewegung. Ausgangspunkt der Argumentation sind bestimmte Sozialstrukturen der paschtunischen Gesellschaft. Ich zeige auf, dass sowohl die seit 1979 andauernden Kriege in Afghanistan als auch der sich anschließende Massenexodus enorme Auswirkungen auf das paschtunische Alltagsleben hatten. Beides führte zu einer kontextspezifischen Verschmelzung von Werten und Normen, die einerseits in bestimmten Charakteristika der paschtunischen Kultur verankert sind, andererseits im militanten Islam. Die Bewegung der Taliban verstand es, solche gesellschaftlichen Veränderungen zu antizipieren und zur Grundlage ihres Erfolges zu machen. Vor allem der Verweis auf den Islam, die Verteidigung der lokalen Autonomie und die Betonung sozialer Gerechtigkeit erwiesen sich als entscheidend für die Selbstwahrnehmung der Taliban-Anhängerschaft. Entsprechend lautet meine Hauptthese, dass das Streben nach Wiederherstellung und Aufrechterhaltung von (idealisierten) lokalen Gesellschaftsordnungen die Taliban-Bewegung erfolgreich machte. Dabei ist die Tendenz, eine (idealisierte) lokale Ordnung im Namen des Islam bewahren zu wollen, nicht etwa einzigartig für die Taliban: Stattdessen beobachtet man Ähnliches vielerorts in der islamischen Welt, und kann es auch als aktuelles Globalisierungsphänomen deuten.

The US-led military invasion of Afghanistan, mission "Enduring Freedom", started 7 October 2001 and catapulted one region of Asia that had seemed to have been forgotten since the end of the Cold War into the forefront of political awareness. However, 12 years later, in 2013, it was more than obvious that the intervention had not achieved the outcomes which were once expected of it. Although US-Special Forces killed Osama bin Laden in the Pakistan city of Abbottabad on 2 May 2011, al-Qaida, the Taliban and other militant Islamist groups are still prevalent in the region and have the potential to revitalize after the withdrawal of international troops.

AbstractEthnicity became a pivotal element of the Bonn Agreement 2001 aiming to end the civil wars in Afghanistan that have been ongoing since 1979. In the political process, ethnic categories were understood as key building blocks of Afghan society. In essence, the Bonn Agreement sought to outbalance ethnic interest to overcome a decisive root cause of this protracted conflict. This article argues that this approach, however, produced the contrary outcome – that is, the political manifestation of ethnicity in Afghan politics. Hereby the political architects of the Bonn Agreement ignored the fuzziness of the concept of ethnicity in Afghan society as well as the implicit and strategic way of using ethnicity in the political arena.

Due to the dominance of the Taliban the media are increasingly using the term "Talibanistan" to describe the region which stretches from the Eastern border of Iran to Kashmir. By discussing the socio-economic structures of Talibanistan this article aims to contribute to the ongoing debate on "failed states" and the "war on terror". Talibanistan has thus not only developed into a region characterized by the failing or absence of modern state functions; furthermore, the behaviour of local elites expresses anti-state attitudes derived from local amalgamations of tribal and Islamic norms and values as well as from the dominance of illicit economies. The case of Talibanistan therefore illustrates that the academic debate on failed states is too much influenced by the ideal type of a Weberian state and takes too little into consideration that political developments in many regions of the world (e.g. Horn of Africa, Afghanistan) are targeting the modern state order per se. Moreover, this contribution attempts to go beyond typical military analyses, which focus mainly on the combat operations in the "war on terror" between NATO and the Taliban movement and often enough ignore the socio-economic dimension of this conflict.

The terrorists ' attacks of 11 th September catapulted the war in Afghanistan, a forgotten crisis, into the centre of world events. Almost all policymakers, journalists and academics tended to reduce the conflict in Afghanistan to its ethnic dimension. In full accordance with this assessment the United Nations strived to end the "ethnic conflict" in Afghanistan with an "ethnic solution" at the Petersberg Conference in December 2001. What this approach ignored is the fact that, despite the ethnicization of the conflict, the ethnicization of the Afghan masses failed. Although ethnicity became a political-military force to reckon with during the 23 year ongoing Afghan war, the significance of ethnicity as basis of political articulation and social organisation remained strictly limited. Hence, ethnicity was opposed by competing identities as well as by strategic considerations of the war factions. Against this background the accentuation of ethnicity as well as the attempt to apply an "ethnic solution" to Afghanistan marks a serious risk.

The G7 is certainly not a haven of participatory design in the world, but the elitist merger seven like-minded western industrialized countries. With the deliberate exclusion of Russia, as well as the keeping of emerging Powers such as China, India, Brazil or Turkey contrasted the meeting - similar to the UN Security Council - an out-building, multipolar world order. And the meeting with African leaders picked at the edge of the summit seemed more imperial. Adapted from the source document.