This paper focuses on the concept of food security, its evolution, and the coverage of its temporal aspect, that is, its stability. Food security was only conceptualised quite recently in the mid-1970s. The adopted definition at the World Food Summit in 1996 described four dimensions, one of which is stability, which are crucial for the achievement of food security. During the process of conceptualising, both non-political and internal political factors are well reflected in the evolving concept. However, after the end of the Cold War in the 1990s, there were no changes made to cover the external political forces, that is, the rising trend of sanctions imposition by states and international organisations and institutions. Therefore, the temporal dimension in the adopted definition exhibits a critical issue of coverage of the circumstances, which can impact the achievement of food security. Therefore, this article will look at the chronological evolution of the concept since the emergence of the world food crisis and examine the impact of the external political forces on the four dimensions of food security in Iraq. Then, it will explain the deficiency and what was neglected when adopting the final version of the food security concept.

This paper seeks to understand the impact of international aid on conflict, and the processes, through which international aid affected conflict in Afghanistan. To build a causal chain for the research of the effect of aid on conflict, this study recasts the theoretical assumptions of grievance in political science and greed in economics as testable hypotheses, in aid-conflict nexus. The process entails accounting for third variables, elucidating how and why aidconflict are related. This necessitates mediation and moderation analyses. To conduct this study, Global Terrorism Data (GTD), Aid Data, World Bank Gini Index, and aid-looting data, collected through an online Likert Questionnaire, were combined. For analysis, moderation and the mediating effects were statistically modelled and tested using Hayes SPSS Process Macro. According to moderation analysis, grievance had an insignificant moderating effect on the aid-conflict nexus (b=-.0003, 95% C.I. [-.0007, -.0001]. t=-1.7257, p=.0947). A closer examination revealed that the regression line became steeper as economic grievance rose, indicating a modest conflict mitigating effect. According to mediation analysis aid was a strong predictor of conflict (b= .0027, β= .52, t= 3.42, p < .001). Aid ceased being a strong predictor, when aid-looting was included, indicating a full-mediation (b= −.0001, β= −.0200, t= −.1079, p > .05). Instead, aid-looting emerged as a strong predictor of conflict (b=2.8292, β= .7305, t= 3.9, p < .05).