“…Yet rapidly increasing land values as the basis for private accumulation amid major international 'peace' missions are not a novel phenomenon (see Sidney, 2009). Similar dynamics have been reported from other conflict-afflicted cities in the global South such as Dili in Timor-Leste (Fitzpatrick, 2001;Patrick, 2001; see also Moxham and Carapic, 2013), Monrovia in Liberia (Unruh, 2009), Freetown in Sierra Leone (Esser, 2012) and Goma in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (Büscher and Vlassenroot, 2010; see also Vlassenroot and Büscher, 2013). Some of these studies-in particular that of Moxham and Carapic-also note concerns about a narrowing of local political agency in these cities, akin to the trade-off between local accumulation and local deliberation described here in relation to post-invasion Kabul.…”