Description
Female Engagement Teams (FETs) remain a tactical asset on UN and NATO Human Security operations today, becoming an international model for practising gender perspectives on the ground and satisfying the Women, Peace and Security agenda set out in UNSCR 1325. And yet, the British Army have constructed an enduring story of FETs in Afghanistan as a failed concept, at best ‘a good idea that didn’t really work out’. This is not based on their performance because attempts to measure their effect were limited, compounded by insufficient operational record keeping and a failure to retain a repository of these records, resulting in an over-reliance on limited sources. There has never been a strategic pause to review their long history and ask the question of why as well as how. Fundamentally, the employment of FETs by the British Army failed to acknowledge the implications of implementing an operational practice, underpinned by understandings of gender, without looking internally to critique the gendered character of the institution trying to deliver it. This research outlines how FETs were established and employed, arguing that they were simultaneously visibly welcomed and invisibly undermined. FETs provide a case study in Human Security operations, the lessons of which have direct application to Human Security Advisers training and operating today.
