Abstract

How do counterinsurgency-informed stabilization mandates impact the possibilities for peacebuilding and conflict resolution? Integrating military objectives with goals commonly associated with peacebuilding was a key policy trend in the 2000s. Supported by the interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq, which exposed the limitations of a conventional military approach for fighting unconventional wars, counterinsurgency re-emerged in an allegedly more enlightened, population-centric version, as stabilization mandates, counterinsurgency, and peacebuilding converged. Analysing the increasing blur between the three concepts, the chapter challenges the legitimating depictions of the ‘new’ counterinsurgency as a more enlightened and benign hearts and mind approach that enables and sustains stability and peace. The analysis of the Malian and Somalian cases reveal how military intervention incorporates peacebuilding and holistic approaches into its logic only to the extent that it normalizes and legitimizes the use of force, perpetually.