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Informal (In)security in Urban Afghanistan

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Stefan Schütte
Stefan Schütte*
Affiliation:
Centre for Development Studies, Freie Universität Berlin, Germany
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Abstract

Poverty and insecurity in Afghan cities are intricately intertwined with conditions of “informality.” The term and the realities it describes refer to living situations in which basic needs and activities such as work, housing, and social security are unprotected by laws and standards. Immersion into such a convolution of informality determines the life of a majority among urban populations in Afghanistan and conveys a deep sense of insecurity for the urban poor. The paper looks at how rapid and unprecedented urban growth in Afghanistan goes along with rising levels of livelihood insecurity and explores how the urban poor cope with livelihood risks through a range of informal arrangements. Conceptually, the notion of “informal security regimes” helps capture informality as a coping strategy and how it relates to urban poverty in Afghanistan. Informed by extensive empirical fieldwork, the paper identifies different elements of the “informal security regime” in urban Afghanistan and explores their specific operations. The paper is mainly focused on the Afghan capital, Kabul, supplemented with evidence from other urban sites in Afghanistan.

Type
Articles
Information
Iranian Studies , Volume 42 , Issue 3 , June 2009 , pp. 465 - 491
Copyright
Copyright © The International Society for Iranian Studies 2009

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20 The findings presented in this paper are drawn from one-year longitudinal household-level research in the Afghan cities of Kabul, Herat, and Jalalabad and short-term case studies in the cities of Mazar-e Sharif and Pul-e Khumri. In the long-term study areas research teams worked with a permanent sample of 40 households in each site. These households were recurrently visited over the period of one full year, allowing for an in-depth investigation of change over time, as the urban environment evolved, and producing detailed evidence of livelihood and coping strategies carried out by different types of households (i.e. consisting of different ethnicities, female-headed households, returned refugees, and internally displaced persons). The research was carried out between 2004 and 2006 under the auspices of the Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit (AREU), an independent research organization based in Kabul; see: Schütte, S., Poverty Amid Prosperity: Urban Livelihoods in Herat (Kabul, 2006)Google Scholar; Schütte, S., Searching for Security: Urban Livelihoods in Kabul (Kabul, 2006)Google Scholar; Schütte, S., Gaining Some Ground: Urban Livelihoods in Jalalabad (Kabul, 2006)Google Scholar; Schütte, S., Poor, Poorer, Poorest: Urban Livelihoods and Vulnerability in Mazar-i-Sharif (Kabul, 2006)Google Scholar; Schütte, S., Dwindling Industry, Growing Poverty: Urban Livelihoods in Pul-e Khumri (Kabul, 2006)Google Scholar.

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28 This has been severely exemplified over early 2008 when sharply rising prices for wheat and wheat flour put the basic staple food in Afghanistan literally out of reach for poor populations.

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45 This is referred to by the local term ograyi, a system of obtaining goods for trade on credit, which involves kind-instalments to be returned in cash. It is probably the most widely used form of credit for trade in Afghanistan, and virtually all mobile vending activities are channelled via ograyi. Mobile vendors obtain their stock through wholesale dealers, and only after selling do they pay for the sale items. Often this happens on a daily base, but can also take place weekly or monthly, as per prior agreements.

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