By Rikke Haugegaard

In this essay, the author calls for increased gender awareness in counter-insurgency operations. The main focus is to draw attention to the potential roles of local women in counterinsurgency, especially in Afghanistan. How can local women contribute to the fight against the Taliban in Afghanistan? How can ISAF and the Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan gain terrain by building alliances with local women?

The Taliban movement is harassing, threatening and killing local women who are working as professionals for the Afghan government or as leaders of women's networks in the province of Helmand (teachers, headmasters, police, health workers and leaders of women's groups/centres). Sometimes threats and violence have been imposed on their husbands too.

In recent years, NATO International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in support of the Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan (GIRoA) has been performing counterinsurgency activities in Afghanistan. The southern and eastern provinces in the country are strongly influenced by different insurgent groups, such as the Taliban, drug lords and local war lords. The province of Helmand is currently one of the most dangerous provinces in Afghanistan.

Women are harassed on their way to work or school. The Taliban movement wants to prevent the mobility and freedom of women. Their general aim is to enforce strict Sharia laws on the local population, and to enforce a gender balance with the men ruling the women - and a strict separation of women from men, as well as boys from girls, in public as well as in private life. The Taliban is inspired to apply these rules in society by their radical interpretation of Sunni-Islam.

By James Clinch

A child taking its first steps as the Soviet empire was breaking apart would barely have reached school age when MP Tony Blair charged the UK Defence Forum with 'thinking the unthinkable' on defence and security. Yet in that short space of time the pace of change was such that his radical appeal already had the ring of pragmatism. Verities that had guided strategic thinking for decades were, in the post-Cold War context and amidst contending images of the future, increasingly suspected of being outmoded. After the dramatic events of 2001 they were, it seemed, potentially even dangerous.

The drive to transcend conventional wisdom has only intensified since. U.S. General Martin E. Dempsey used this year's Kermit Roosevelt Lecture to warn against 'the failure of imagination' in respect of defence issues, and just last year respected analyst Joshua Cooper Ramo, managing director of Kissinger Associates, released a book declaring ours nothing less than the 'Age of the Unthinkable', urging a degree of mental dexterity commensurate to the bewildering complexity that he argues now defines the strategic realm. Ramo's work is merely the culmination of a trend: drop a line into any stream of the literature on defence and security over the past fifteen years and one is almost certain to catch a reference to the need to radically revise our thinking. But if the revelation of fresh ideas is now a commonplace, if the search for unorthodoxy is itself becoming orthodox, exactly what 'thinking the unthinkable' means is becoming increasingly hard to determine.

The UK Defence Forum is delighted to announce that the winner of the 2010 Tim Garden Essay Competition is Rikke Haugegaard.

Rikke's essay, entitled 'Female power: the role of Afghan women in counter insurgency', is now published on the UK Defence Forum website www.ukdf.org.uk . She explores how local women can contribute to the fight against the Taliban in Afghanistan and how ISAF and the Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan can gain terrain by building alliances with local women.

Rikke Haugegaard holds a Master degree in Cultural Anthropology from the University of Copenhagen, and a PgCert in Information Operations from Cranfield University, Faculty of Defence and Security. Rikke is a Cultural Awareness instructor in the Danish Army and police, and has been conducting pre-deployment training of primarily CIMIC officers in Canada, Macedonia, Norway, Serbia and Sweden. She has been doing research on Afghanistan for the Royal Danish Defence College, and her research interest is post-conflict reconstruction and the role of women in global security. Rikke Haugegaard is the owner of the consultancy firm Understanding Culture.

Two other entrants were highly commended:

James Clinch for 'Between change and continuity: Western cultural memory and 21st Century security.'

Ian Shields for 'Security or insecurity,'

Both have been published on Defence Viewpoints www.defenceviewpoints.co.uk .

James Clinch is studying for an MSc in International Relations at the LSE, and was previously awarded first class honours in Political Science from the University of Melbourne. Between graduating high school and starting university James took several years out to travel, and has explored many remote corners of Asia. In 2007 he did an internship with the International Crisis Group, in Pakistan, working on a report about madrassas in Karachi, and is currently an intern at the International Institute of Strategic Studies, London.

Ian Shields is a retired RAF Group Captain and is now studying for a doctorate in International Relations at Cambridge University where his thesis will be on the impact of Globalisation on Civil-Military Relations. He has lectured and been extensively published on Air and Space Power and in his final RAF tour he authored the 2009 Future Air and Space Operational Concept, looking forward 20 years; his other academic interest is in strategic thinking.

The chairman of the judging panel, Baroness Garden of Frognal, said:

"Tim once wrote 'corruption undermines the relationship between officialdom and the citizen, and is an attack on democracy. Thus when we claim a role in promoting democratic values around the world we have a special responsibility to prevent corruption.'

"Rikke points out that in Afghanistan, corruption is widespread. Local women have only limited access to resources because they are not part of the drug trade network and associated corruption dominated by local warlords and the Taliban. Education of local women in good governance would help to move towards a society less dominated by corruption and the opium trade, thereby achieving the aims of a wide range of supporters of intervention, which has so far cost over 300 British, 1000 American and other allies' lives.

"Rikke has not only 'talked the talk' she is 'walking the walk' by training Danish forces who are serving alongside British forces in Helmand, both in Denmark and in Afghanistan.

"The standard of entries was very high, and the competition a close run thing – as witness the joint runners-up I highly commended. Entries from more than ten universities have encouraged us to start thinking about the 2011 essay competition already."