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Copyright of Polemos is the property of Croatian Sociological Association and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper explores the way education and conflict have become entangled during the post-9/11 "war on terror" response to "radical Islam" at home and abroad. The paper charts the complex ways that education has been deployed to serve Western military and security objectives in multiple locations in the global south and how these strategies have now returned to the "West" in the form of "countering violent extremism" interventions. Drawing on Foucault's concept of the "boomerang effect" I will explore whether and how education techniques and strategies deployed abroad in pursuit of imperial interests return to the West and are deployed to monitor, control and suppress marginalised communities in a form of "internal colonialism". Finally, the paper brings the two sections together in the Findings to explore commonalities and divergences.

The paper compares the American and Soviet transformations at Kabul University, Afghanistan, during the 1960s to the 1980s explained in terms of Americanisation and Sovietisation. Using new declassified documents from both American and former Soviet archives, the author reveals that both powers attempted to impose their rival models of university education in Afghanistan. However, resistance on the part of the Afghan university undermined both of their cultural influences, thus causing their policies of reform to eventually fail. The case of Kabul University demonstrates the inability of the superpowers to encourage the formation of pliable students and professors. Despite crucial transformations in the structure, administration apparatus, and content of disciplines, both superpowers were not able to change the traditions and values of professors and students. The university community has been proven to be the main cause for the success or failure of any reforms brought to a university by external powers.

The withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan is a direct consequence of structural changes in the polarity of the international system. Following the end of the Cold War, the US emerged as the dominant country in the system, making it relatively easy to pursue a foreign policy based on liberal principles, where state-building and social engineering were among the main principles. While some scholars consider the US withdrawal from Afghanistan a strategic failure of its foreign policy, this paper argues that such action was necessary due to fundamental changes in the constellation of forces in the international system. The main reason for this withdrawal is the economic growth of China and its power projection in Asia and other regions of the world. Therefore, similar US actions can be anticipated in the future. This paper adopts a structural realist approach as its primary theoretical framework and Afghanistan is used as the case study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

September 11, 2001 generated diverse responses from around the world, but for many subjects located in "the West," an enduring perception surfaced in the aftermath of the attacks: that 9/11 revealed the fragility of the "Western Self" as a secure identity. In a move towards self-scrutiny post 9/11, it is not only the presence of the Other that has moved into sight, many topics of the so-called margin--race, gender, ethnicity, religion--have been pushed center-stage in national and global affairs. In this article, the author attempts to set out some of the ways in which postcolonial studies might prove useful post-9/11, particularly in its emphasis on transcultural and interdisciplinary enquiry. The author also attempts to establish the critical limits of postcolonial analysis, and to identify where alternative discourses are writing from new margins, which must also become sites of enquiry. In doing so, the author hopes to make some tentative suggestions regarding the theoretical and cultural networks that might be forged in research and teaching via postcolonial studies post-9/11, using her own research fields--gender studies, visual studies, and cultural representation of the Middle East--as examples. (Contains 7 notes.)

In the midst of the violence of the 21st century, many children fear that they or someone they know will lose a relative or friend through terrorism. Professionals in dance movement therapy, dance education, and physical education can help children to overcome their fears in order to feel safe and to build self-esteem. This article examines how several nations use dance education and therapy to help children manage the trauma of violence and loss. Unfortunately, dance programs alone cannot guarantee the end of conflict, but they can act as a catalyst for better understanding for future generations. Much can be learned from dance educators and movement therapists who have, by their own sense of humanity and extensive training, bravely explored the concept of healing for children traumatized by war. Dance movement therapists must fulfill the requirements of higher educational institutions and the standards of the American Dance Therapy Association in order to handle challenges that lie ahead. Well-trained dance and physical educators will continue to play a major role in providing an outlet for expression.

The fall of Afghanistan and the immediate geopolitical space in the region represented a unique instance of political will and alignment toward Afghanistan between the United States and the European Union. Combined with pressing concerns of increasing danger to an at-risk population of Afghanistan citizens who collaborated with the US-led coalition, immediate and broad-reaching action was needed to ensure not only the safety of these individuals left behind in Afghanistan but also those who were evacuated. This paper proposes joint US-EU collaborative efforts and revisions to pre-existing evacuation frameworks to facilitate further evacuations out of Afghanistan. The challenges that existed in spring 2022 in the immediate aftermath are described, and subsequent proposals on redress are provided as a case study for failures in preexisting frameworks. Further analysis of developments since spring 2022 demonstrate applicability and lack thereof because of the changed geopolitical space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 9/11 attacks triggered a paradigm shift in the United States security policy, prioritizing to ensure homeland security and to fight against the terrorism in the new American strategy. The United States invasion of Afghanistan further ravaged the existing fragile state damaging the already crumbling socio-economic and human infrastructure. In addition, the spillover of war into Pakistan started a new era of instability and misery further complicating the socio-economic fabric of the country making it the most vulnerable to terrorism related incidents. The two decades prolonged conflict not only destroyed the economic, social, and political infrastructure in both states, meanwhile mass human rights violations have been committed by the coalition forces under the leadership of the United States. In this context, the present paper investigates human rights abuses through the prism of international human rights law. The study addresses the following questions. (a) To what extent the United States war against terror violates the international law of human rights, and how it helps Washington to reconsolidate the regional hegemony. (b) Whether the war on terror improve the situation of human rights or further aggravate the conditions of civilians in targeted states. The study underlines that the war on terror failed to meet the merit of the right to intervene for self-defense, yet the coalition forces deliberately assimilate the innocent civilians under the vagueanti-terror war rhetoric. In addition, the war serves the United States hegemonic interests in South Asia, as the American presence in Afghanistan and the Indo-United States strategic partnership brought serious geopolitical implications for China and Pakistan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper adopts a socio-historical perspective to explore when, how and why the eradication of poliomyelitis has become politicised to the extent that health workers and security personnel are targeted in drive-by shootings. Discussions of the polio crisis in Afghanistan and Pakistan have tended to focus on Taliban suspicions of a US-led public health intervention and the denunciation of ‘modernity’ by Islamic ‘extremists’. In contrast, this paper considers a broader history of indigenous hostility and resistance to colonial immunisation on the subcontinent, suggesting how interconnected public health and political crises today have reactivated the past and created a continuity between events. The paper explores how the biomedical threat posed by polio has become intertwined with military and governmental discourses premised on the ‘preemptive strike’. Here, the paper tracks the connections between biological immunity and a postcolonial politics that posits an immunological rationale for politico-military interventions. The paper concludes by reflecting on the consequences for global public health of this entanglement of infectious disease with terror. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

US democracy promotion is integral to the pursuit of the grand project of the American Mission. By promoting democracy America makes its role one of international engagement as opposed to one of isolation. The first part of this paper examines the political and cultural aspects of US democracy promotion in the post-Cold War era through the bi-polar framework of the case-specific versus one-size-fits-all. To better understand USAID's democracy promotion policy, the second part takes this framework and applies it to its political reform strategy in Bosnia under the Clinton administration from 1995 to 2000 and Afghanistan under the Bush administration from 2001 to 2008. This paper confirms that America's democracy promotion simultaneously employed both the case-specific and one-size-fits-all approaches. USAID programmes and projects did at times respond to local conditions but nevertheless appear to employ a blueprint design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

U.S failure in Afghanistan may have many reasons but most striking is US inability to create a political Afghanistan in parallel with a military Afghanistan. The political strategy in Afghanistan was over-shadowed by military strategy. All the U.S force commanders in Afghanistan looked at Afghanistan not as a political but as a military problem. These generals remained very passionate about the military strategies geared to win the war in Afghanistan. This paper tries to determine why the achievement of the political aims of fighting the war in Afghanistan remained subservient to the achievement of the military aims; and secondly, now that the American focus is on pursuing a political settlement in Afghanistan, how likely is the U.S to achieve this aim? Which are the likely scenarios that can develop in the coming days and how will they affect interests of various actors involved in the Afghan war and its end game? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ostensibly, Joe Biden's victory over Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential elections should have placed United States international policy back on a familiar path. However, despite the prevalence of a highly traditional vision of US foreign policy, the Biden administration has maintained significant continuities with the previous administration, as reflected in the policy towards China and the withdrawal from Afghanistan. In part, this is due to the constraints produced by the deep divisions that exist at domestic level. This paper aims to unravel the fundamental elements of Biden's foreign policy, focusing on possible ideological and doctrinal elements, strategic priorities, and any continuities and changes relative to his predecessor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Immediately after the 9/11 attacks America readied itself to strike back against those it knew to be responsible. After failed diplomatic attempts to get the fundamentalist Taliban government of Mullah Omar to hand over bin Laden, a joint UK/USA invasion of Afghanistan was launched. However, unlike previous invasions, this campaign would not use large-scale deployments of troops but instead would make use of approximately 300 Special Forces operatives supporting intelligence agency staff. This paper argues that conducting an invasion in this way matches the theory of cyberwar proposed by Arquilla and Rondfelt (1993). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Externally driven state-building is a complicated task that rarely fulfils the declared objectives of the international actors or the local state and society. This paper critiques the international dimension to state-building by examining USAID in Afghanistan and identifying the theoretical and practical explanations for its failure to aid democratic consolidation. Arguing that the Bush administration's democratisation efforts have had a negative impact on consolidating democracy, this paper identifies the democratic product of Afghanistan as characterised, at most, by having the formal institutions, routines and procedures of a democracy. I suggest that this merely 'formal' democratic product is too short-term and fails to take fully into account the need to develop a political and social culture capable of supporting democratic institutions. In terms of the future of democracy promotion in US foreign policy, I suggest that a change of emphasis may be occurring in the Obama administration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The new Afghan policy is articulated to achieve military victory as it is characterized with increasing military operation and escalation in aerial strikes in border areas of Pakistan and a new surge of 30,000 US troops to Afghanistan, seems a part of the strategy. It is important to note that for the first time, a timeline for the evacuation of NATO troops along with an exit strategy for the American forces has been given, following up the American presidential elections in November 2012. Although the interests of both Pakistan and US coincide yet Washington is not satisfied with Islamabad. This paper aims at discussing the US agenda in Afghanistan and its implications for Pakistan. It will look at the real intentions of US- whether it really wants to defeat Taliban or dismantle Al-Qaeda or both and is the new strategy likely to be effective? Surely it will be decided in the times to come, as it is not possible to predict about forestall future. The fundamental questions are about the success of this strategy as America could not win the war in last eight years, how could it assert its success by sending more troops? It seems that Obama's new Afghan policy is indeed the formulation of its policy for Pakistan which is to come into effect from 2010. The policy carries many aspects of fears and dangers for Pakistan. It is doubted that the increased US troops is to build more pressure on Pakistan. Is it not likely that America is creating this situation under proper planning and is pushing Pakistan in this warfront? As this policy is a vivid picture of an endless conflict in the South Asian region, the paper is an effort to analyze and explore the covert groundwork through notorious organizations like black water and other foreign elements, which are organized by them to create chaos and confusion in Pakistan. What are their hidden designs? Why the number of high ranking US officials, NGOs, delegations, security agencies, diplomats and 'spies' have increased all of a sudden? These all aspects will be discussed in the paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over seven years after the 11 September 2001 attacks on the United States, Afghanistan is again at the forefront of the headlines, faced with a brutal insurgency and a resurgent Taliban. Many scholars and policymakers attribute the instability in Afghanistan to a terrorist sanctuary in the neighboring Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). Pakistan has attempted to eliminate this sanctuary through negotiation and armed force. This paper argues that Pakistani strategy has failed to achieve its desired results because of local tribal norms, the weak nature of previous agreements, military units ill-equipped for a counterinsurgency and counterterrorism role, as well as ideological fissures in the Pakistani establishment. Afterward, the paper argues that the United States and Coalition forces should pursue their strategy remaining cognizant of local tribal norms, step up training efforts for Pakistani forces, promote development of the tribal areas, and cultivate options for eliminating the FATA sanctuary through covert means. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the terrorist attacks upon the United States on September 11, 2001, the United States and other nations in the world have been engaged in a global war on terrorism, either in Iraq, Afghanistan, the horn of Africa, Spain, or the United Kingdom. President George W. Bush of the United States has made it a center piece of his administration, and the next incoming United States president - be it Senator John McCain or Senator Barrack Obama - will have to make tough decisions regarding the execution of the war. This paper aims to clarify the legal and military options available to the President of the United States regarding the killing of terrorist leaders; and specifically argues that the United States can lawfully kill terrorist leaders, either as heads of state or entities. The common criticism of this point is that killing these individuals amounts to an unlawful state-sponsored assassination program. This author will attempt to deconstruct that criticism and provide a legal framework for a targeted killing policy and when it would be authorized, against whom, and restrictions on such a program. Part II provides context and scope of the paper, including relevant definitions. Part III will describe the recent modern history of attempts by the United States to assassinate leaders. And, parts IV and V will discuss the legal framework and make the substantive argument and conclusions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During combat in April 2004, the Defense Department airdropped 45,000 t of engineering equipment to build a semiprepared airfield in eastern Afghanistan. Engineers encountered two types of challenges as they shaped the natural material into a runway. First, significant quantities of aggregate in the soil highlighted the limitations of determining bearing properties by dynamic cone penetrometer indexing alone. When field expediency is required in these conditions, both the penetrometer and a complementary mechanism—such as the Unified Soil Classification System—should be used to determine the material’s bearing capacity. Wear layer confinement in semiarid climates is also addressed, and meteorological observations complemented data development. Second, weather phenomena corresponding to airfields at higher elevations generally decrease aircraft performance. The engineering result is reduced tolerance for runway unevenness when aircraft are traveling at high speeds. When building airfields located at higher elevations, design criteria must account for this diminished tolerance and its relationship to aviation safety. This paper presents data derived from military activities and suggests a mechanism for measuring the degree of runway unevenness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Each conflict has components which mark for simple and uncomplicated evaluation to the previous ones. It has been American history that whenever it involved in any war, it had to come across much difficult and unpleasant situations. In the World War II, Vietnam was boondocks for American armed forces, and nothing much was important as far as an absolute struggle against Japan and American officials charged with the contours of the post-war world, was concerned. Still paradoxically, United States became involved in Vietnam even before the eruption of armed hostilities between the French and Vietminh. It is generally believed that the US has neither fought any war larger than Vietnam War nor has any of its war been criticized so far. And there is no weighing up of the sufferings. The toll in suffering, grief in resentful national commotion can never be put into a table. Today the US is again entangled in a war in Afghanistan which has entered in 13th year with no results and success in the offing. This paper is an attempt to analyze whether Vietnam War, fought 48 years ago, was indeed the first episode of today's Afghan War or not? The study will comprise of all the details of those times in order to bring out comparison between the two wars. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At the heart of current doctrinal debates in the United States Army between counterinsurgents and warfighters is a fight over the gender identity of the institution itself. With women making up an increasing portion of the Army the default 'maleness' of the institution has become problematic. This has been exacerbated by post-9/1l battlefields in which soldiers not traditionally trained for combat operations, including women, come into contact with the enemy. The Army's response has been twofold. First it has created a new institutional gender identity - the warrior - that is meant to provide women and soldiers traditionally not directly involved in combat with a covering masculinity. Second it has resisted and rejected non-combat operations as insufficiently warrior like. This has created conflict with counterinsurgents seeking to apply modes of power less oriented to destruction - so-called kinetics - and more towards domination and transformation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since September 11, 2001, 2.4 million military personnel have deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan. To date, roughly 1.44 million have separated from the military and approximately 772,000 of these veterans have used VA health care. Combat deployments impact the physical, psychological, and social health of veterans. Given that many veterans are receiving care from non-VA providers, it is important that all community health care workers be familiar with the unique health care needs of this patient population, which include injuries associated with blast exposures (including mild traumatic brain injury), as well as a variety of mental health conditions, such as post-traumatic stress disorder. Other important health concerns are chronic musculoskeletal pain, medically unexplained symptoms, sequelae of environmental exposures, depression, suicide, substance abuse, sleep disturbances, and impairments in family, occupational and social functioning. Elevated rates of hypertension and tobacco use remind us that deployment may result not only in immediate impacts on health, but also increase risk for chronic disease, contributing to a growing public health burden. This paper provides a comprehensive review of these health concerns and offers practical management guidelines for primary care providers. In light of relationships between physical, psychological and psychosocial concerns in this population, we recommend an interdisciplinary approach to care directed toward mitigating the long-term health impacts of combat. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper examines the current impasse in the Pakistan-US relations, which have remained fraught with acrimony, and hostage to the Washington's insistence on Islamabad 'to do more' to eradicate the terrorist network of militant groups, Taliban and Al-Qaeda, operating from Pakistan's tribal areas and perpetrating terrorism within and outside Pakistan. It is argued that from the outset the two allies in the Global War on Terror (GWOT) have divergent strategic interests in the region. For the US, the GWOT was meant to curb the Al- Qaeda-led global terrorism and punish the perpetrators of the September 11, 2001, attack on the American soil. On the other hand, Pakistan, which reluctantly joined the US-led GWOT, wanted to secure its interests, domestic and regional, by avoiding the American wrath. It is argued that both the US and Pakistan need to re-define the existing level of their relations and work together for attaining higher goals, set in the GWOT. Failing to do so, may jeopardize the counter-terrorism military operations in Pakistan-Afghanistan border areas. Consequently, the region as well as the world at large will continue to face the menace of terrorism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to explore how a particular narrative focused on population-centric counterinsurgency shaped American strategy during the Autumn 2009 Presidential review on Afghanistan, examine the narrative's genealogy and suggest weaknesses and inconsistencies that exist within it. More precisely our ambition is to show how through a process of 'rhetorical re-description' this narrative has come to dominate contemporary American strategic discourse. We argue that in order to promote and legitimate their case, a contemporary 'COIN Lobby' of influential warrior scholars, academics and commentators utilizes select historical interpretations of counterinsurgency and limits discussion of COIN to what they consider to be failures in implementation. As a result, it has become very difficult for other ways of conceptualizing the counterinsurgency problem to emerge into the policy debate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There has been extensive literature on the strong political, economic, and cultural ties between the US and Canada. Foreign policy is a delicate issue between the two nations, whereby a central raised question pertains to whether Canada should parallel American foreign policies or create its own. This, however, augments into a situation that highlights a division between government announcements and media portrayals, deeming it necessary to investigate how and to what extent American foreign policies affect Canadian media, directly or indirectly, through their impact on Canadian foreign policies. This paper sets out to identify and reflect on the interconnected relationship between American foreign policy, Canadian foreign policy, and the Canadian media. With application to three central conflicts in the greater Middle East - the war on Iraq, the war in Afghanistan, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict - this paper utilizes textual archival analysis of several US and Canadian government websites, as well as quantitative and qualitative content analysis of two major Canadian English newspapers - The Globe and Mail and The National Post. The paper concludes that Canadian foreign policies have been divergent from American foreign policies towards conflicts in the Middle East, while the Canadian media have been convergent to American foreign policies, being influenced by the US announcements and initiatives as well as American sources of information including the media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study aims at investigating as how Afghanistan is being represented and portrayed in two leading US magazines - Newsweek and Time. Prefatory pages of the paper shed some light on the growth of economy and media in Afghanistan followed by a brief overview of relations between the US and Afghanistan during the last decade. The contents of twenty leading articles of Newsweek and Time were analyzed which clearly depicts that the proportion of negative coverage (57.08%) was greater than the positive coverage (6.08%). Newsweek and Time mainly represented Afghanistan as an abode of Taliban and extremism, penitentiary for women, a narcotics den, a centre for Islamization, and a safe haven for Al-Qaida and Usama Bin Laden, to include a few. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Middle Eastern Studies / Ortadoğu Etütleri is the property of Turkmen Cooperation & Cultural Foundation Center for Middle Eastern Strategic Studies (ORSAM) and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper discusses the differences in the liberal secularist and the Islamists' discourses related to the 'War on Terror'. These views are crystallised around a number of issues and their understanding of these differentiates them from each other. These issues include attitudes towards the nature of the Pakistani and Afghan states and the place of religion in these; attitudes towards the West in general and the US in particular, and the support for and criticism of the War on Terror carried out in the name of freedom, democracy and modernity. The hegemonic discourses of the liberals and secularists and counter-hegemonic discourses of the Islamists indicate an ideological and strategic polarisation, as reflected in the condemnation of, or support for, Islamism and armed resistance by militants in Pakistan and Afghanistan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The September 11 attacks on the US dramatized the relationship between media spectacles of terror and the strategy of Islamic Jihadism that employs violent media events to promote its agenda. But US administrations have also used spectacles of terror to promote US military power and geopolitical ends, as is evident in the Gulf war of 1990-1991, the Afghanistan war of fall 2001, and the Iraq war of 2003. In this paper I argue that both Islamic Jihadists and two Bush administrations have deployed spectacles of terror to promote their political agendas; that both deploy Manichean discourses of good and evil which themselves fit into dominant media codes of popular culture; and that both deploy fundamentalist and absolutist discourses. Criticizing the role of the US broadcasting media in presenting the September 11 terror spectacle and subsequent Bush Terror War, I argue against both Islamic terrorism and US militarism, and call for multilateral and global responses to terrorism and rogue regimes. I also argue that the Internet is the best source of information concerning complex events like Terror War, while mainstream US corporate media, especially broadcasting, have become instruments of propaganda for the Bush administration and Pentagon during spectacles of terrorism and war. Finally, I suggest limitations to the politics of the spectacle and argue that the record of the spectacles of Terror War in recent years discloses highly ambiguous, unpredictable, and negative political effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A cacophony of protest greeted President Biden's withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan following a 20-year deployment, implemented and overseen by four different administrations, both Republican and Democrat. For all the criticism of the final withdrawal's implementation, however, strategic ambivalence was always present in U.S. operations in Afghanistan. The bi-partisan decisions that defined the Afghan mission can best be seen in the National Security Strategy documents produced by successive administrations as they sought to address the evolving situation on the ground and the perceived level of threat to the United States. The utilization of discourse analysis to examine these official policy documents allows for an understanding of the comparable attention that was paid to Afghanistan by successive administrations, as well as for an appreciation of the tone and language used regarding the nation. Doing so reveals that despite the duration of the mission and the associated costs, a deep-seated strategic ambiguity existed towards Afghanistan, as it languished as a sideshow for U.S. grand strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to examine how a language of 'women's rights' entered into foreign policy discourses of the Bush Administration in the period of 2001-2004. Through a discursive analysis of speeches, press releases, interviews and written documents, I find that feminist-inspired language and concepts entered into the mainstream discourse on numerous occasions throughout this period, though usually in the service of other foreign policy objectives. In this analysis, I identify three primary 'dialogical frames' in which such references appear, labelling these: 'Us vs. Them', 'The Active Leader', and 'The Moral Community'. Many feminists have argued that these kinds of references are disingenuous 'gender decoys'. While politically motivated calculation clearly played a role in this discourse, I argue that ideology and identity must also be taken into account as influencing factors. In conclusion, while problematic, the use of such language by the Bush Administration (or any government for that matter) also presents a discursive opening through which more substantive change may be achieved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Few studies have focused on homelessness among Operations Iraqi Freedom, Enduring Freedom and New Dawn (OEF/OIF/OND) veterans, especially female veterans. An explanatory model of homelessness was constructed and tested for each gender. Data collected in the United States from 833 OEF/OIF/OND veterans (41.5% female; Mage = 35.22, SD = 8.86) who completed the baseline assessment of the Survey of the Experiences of Returning Veterans between September 2011 and July 2014 were analysed. Path analysis was used to examine associations between risk factors and any lifetime homelessness, stratified by gender. Adverse childhood events (ACEs) and low social support were significantly associated with lifetime homelessness for both genders. Social support mediated associations between ACEs and homelessness, after controlling for sociodemographic factors. While sociodemographic risk factors are often considered in homeless prevention, these findings highlight the importance of social support among male and female OEF/OIF/OND veterans, underscoring the need to target this life domain in preventing homelessness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]