The Czech Provincial Reconstruction Team in Afghanistan: Context, Experiences and Politics.

This article is an empirical-theoretical mapping of the Czech participation in the peacebuilding reconstruction of Afghanistan in the form of the Czech Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT). As will become clear, an important part of such a study is a focus on the analysis of the influence of the security context and external factors on the participation and form of the Czech PRT. The study is divided into two basic parts. The first part gives the reader a necessary and sensible grounding. Specifically, it presents a contextual frame for the participation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in Afghanistan. What then follows is an analysis of the domestic political debate in the Czech Republic. One of the findings is that any proper domestic political debate was absent, instead there was a polarization of the relationship between the government of the Czech Republic and the parliamentary opposition on the issue of the Czech PRT Logar. The article concludes with a question concerning the motives of the Czech government for sending the Czech PRT into Afghanistan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]