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In recent years, a number of scholars have investigated interpreting in conflict situations; however, the impact of emotions on the interpreter's performance has not, to date, been the focus of sustained enquiry. This presentation will share the results of a qualitative study that explores the lived experiences of eleven civilian interpreters, four recruited in Spain (national) and seven recruited on-the-ground in Afghanistan (local), and six Spanish high-ranking officers who worked in Afghanistan in the context of counterinsurgency operations. It draws on sociopsychological theories of intractable conflict and Reay's (2015) psychosocial understanding of Bourdieu's habitus in order to examine the impact of emotions on the interpreter's positionality and behaviour. I will begin by discussing, defining and describing the context, the concept of intractable conflict and the nature of counterinsurgency operations. After introducing the theoretical framework mentioned above, I will move on to a brief discussion of the methodology used, that revolved around unstructured interviews, and will present the findings in the form of a narrative on the role of emotions when interpreting in a conflict zone. I will conclude by establishing that the affective shapes the interpreter's positionality, particularly in conflicts in which he or she, as an individual belonging to the local community, is both judge and jury. On the basis of these findings, I argue for further interdisciplinary investigation of the effects of interpreters' emotional states on their performance, particularly in extreme conditions and environments.

In this new century, Western counterinsurgency doctrines in asymmetric wars have moved away from traditional doctrines, focussing now on consolidating the legitimacy of local governments and the pursuit of peace and security. The ISAF (International Security Assistance Force) was created as a counterinsurgency mission to restore the Afghan government's legitimacy, empower the Afghan security forces and gain the support of the local populations. The ASPFOR (Afghanistan Spanish Force) was deployed with the objective of advising the Afghan National Army (ANA). For these mentoring missions, the Spanish army recruited interpreters, both local and national, to communicate with the local armed forces. The present communication will examine the role of interpreters in these missions, constituting a specific context in which the interpreter works between two armed forces coming from very different ideologies, cultures and with very different languages. I will present the results of a study carried out with Spanish military personnel and national and local interpreters who worked for the ASPFOR. By means of a qualitative design, data were collected from the participants through unstructured interviews. Seventeen participants were interviewed, of which six were high-ranking officers and eleven were interpreters. Each narrative was analysed in order to identify statements which told the story of each participant's experience. Formulated meanings were then created and arranged into theme clusters, then collapsed into emergent themes. The findings show that there are significant differences between local and national interpreters in terms of their positionality and that this had an impact on the tasks assigned to each category, the risks they were exposed to, the training needs and the trust put in them by the military personnel. Trust in the interpreter emerges as the priority for the troops, above linguistic skills and specific training. One commonality amongst both categories of interpreter is the lack of interpreting and military training; this, along with lack of ethical guidance, has an impact on the decisions they take. In this discussion of the different positionalities of the interpreter in armed conflicts, I hope to be contributing to three on-going debates: the research will offer an empirically grounded account of the role of military personnel as embedded actors in the conflict having to adapt to different coexisting cultures: their own culture, the culture of the interlocutors and that of the military. Secondly, it aims at providing additional understanding of the factors that shape the interpreter's positionality. Finally, it will contribute to current debates about ethics in certain contexts.

The lack of favorable outcomes produced by recent attempts at counterinsurgency by Western countries shows that the importance of uncovering a more effective approach for conducting external counterinsurgency operations cannot be downplayed. In an attempt to discover what this approach might entail, prior successful interventions conducted by democracies in the Philippines and Kenya were compared to the recent failure in Iraq, using three variable groupings as a lens through which to view all three conflicts and allow cross-conflict comparison of conditions that contributed to success or failure. Through evaluation of indicators linked to these variable groupings, it was determined that there were many similarities in conditions between the two successful examples and an inverse correlation for those conditions in the unsuccessful example. In order to be more successful in the future, intervening states should attempt to replicate the specified conditions found in Kenya and the Philippines, approach interventions with a strategic mindset, and execute interventions holistically instead of with a narrow tactical approach. Finally, planning for counterinsurgency contingencies during an intervention should start before the first dollar is spent or the first bullet fired.