Processes of "securitization" of development cooperation and civil-military cooperation

With this contribution we intend to take a critical look at trends and processes in civil conflict transformation and crisis prevention in the context of security-related German development cooperation. Since the end of the Cold War the design of a new global security architecture has been debated. In the last decade, development cooperation of the countries of the global North was increasingly moved from an independent domain into a space of action, in which exterior, interior, defense, development, and environmental policies are united under the meta topic of "security". The present discourses on national and global security are characterized by tensions between a desired "civilizing" of conflict management and crisis prevention and an increasing discussion of opportunities, needs and practices of civil-military cooperation. Taking the example of the development cooperation with Afghanistan, the context and consequences of programmatic-institutional innovations of development policies in war zones are considered. Development cooperation in connection with the military privileges the reconfiguration of a military perspective, the specificity of civil conflict transformation is lost. Civil reconfigurations of security have to involve multiple uncertainties and security strategies of the local population. They cannot be adapted to a military security logic for example in the context of "counter-insurgency" characterized by a binary friend-or-foe scheme.