Terrain as insurgent weapon: An affective geometry of warfare in the mountains of Afghanistan

The concept of terrain is one of the most important in our spatial lexicon but, with a few exceptions, has been under-analyzed in critical theories of space. In this essay, I propose a materialist and affective conceptualization of terrain that draws from first-hand accounts of warfare in the Korengal Valley in Afghanistan, where the US military's power was undermined by the mountainous terrain and by the manipulation of this terrain by guerrilla fighters. Drawing from Spinoza and the turn to materiality in critical theory, I propose that terrain can be best analyzed through an affective geometry attentive to how bodies in motion are affected by, and affect, the terrain they are part of. In particular, I analyze the visual and textual material on warfare in the Korengal to argue that terrain can be conceptualized as a non-representable multiplicity of forms and objects that is irreducible to human experience and has the power to both constrain and enhance human action; that terrain is intrinsically opaque to human perception; that terrain has a processual, shifting materiality that is inseparable from the flux of the atmosphere; and that terrain's three-dimensional nature becomes most clear in the importance of controlling the higher ground in mountain warfare. This conceptualization of terrain reveals the microphysics of how insurgents weaponized the materiality of mountains and why an affective geometry of terrain matters in the analysis of insurrections.