Gendering Counterinsurgency demonstrates how population-centric counterinsurgency doctrine and practice can be captured within a gendered dynamic of `killing and caring¿ ¿ at once an effort to improve conditions for Afghan civilians, while also subjecting them to physical violence. This contradictory and complementary dynamic cannot be understood without recognising how the legitimation and the practice of this war relied on multiple gendered performances of masculinity and femininity. Developing the concept of embodied performativity this book shows how the clues to understanding war as experience as well as analysing war as a political tool lie in its everyday gendered manifestations.