The relationship between aid and state building is highly complex and the effects of aid on weak states depend on donors’ interests, aid modalities and the recipient’s pre-existing institutional and socio-political conditions. This book argues that, in the case of Afghanistan, the country inherited conditions that were not favourable for effective state building. Although some of the problems that emerged in the post-2001 state building process were predictable, the types of interventions that occurred—including an aid architecture which largely bypassed the state, the subordination of state building to the war on terror, and the short horizon policy choices of donors and the Afghan government—reduced the effectiveness of the aid and undermined effective state building. By examining how foreign aid affected state building in Afghanistan since the US militarily intervened in Afghanistan in late 2001 until the end of President Hamid Karzai’s first term in 2009, this book reveals the dynamic and complex relations between the Afghan government and foreign donors in their efforts to rebuild state institutions. The work explores three key areas: how donors supported government reforms to improve the taxation system, how government reorganized the state’s fiscal management system, and how aid dependency and aid distribution outside the government budget affected interactions between state and society. Given that external revenue in the form of tribute, subsidies and aid has shaped the characteristics of the state in Afghanistan since the mid-eighteenth century, this book situates state building in a historical context. This book will be invaluable for practitioners and anyone studying political economy, state building, international development and the politics of foreign aid.

This book offers an overview of the formation of the Afghan state and of the politics, economic challenges and international relations of contemporary Afghanistan. It opens with an account of some of the key features that make Afghanistan unique and proceeds to discuss how the Afghan state acquired a distinctive character as a rentier state. In addition, the authors outline a complex range of domestic and external factors that led to the breakdown of the state, and how that breakdown gave rise to a set of challenges with which Afghan political and social actors have been struggling to deal since the 2001 international intervention that overthrew the anti-modernist Taliban regime. It then presents the different types of politics that Afghanistan has witnessed over the last two decades; examines some of the most important features of the Afghan economy; and demonstrates how Afghanistan’s geopolitical location and international relations more broadly have complicated the task of promoting stability in the post-2001 period. It concludes with some reflections on the factors that are likely to shape Afghanistan’s future trajectory and notes that if there are hopes for a better future, they largely rest on the shoulders of a globalised generation of younger Afghans. This book will be of interest to students and scholars in the fields of Middle East and Central Asian studies, international relations, politics, development studies and history.

Afghanistan, a landlocked country in Central Asia, has improbably been at the center of international geopolitics for four decades. After the Soviet Union invaded in 1980, Afghanistan descended into an unending conflict that featured at various points most of the world's major powers. In the mid-1990s, the country entered a new phase, when the Taliban took power and imposed order based on a harsh, repressive version of Islamic law. Infamously, the sheltered Osama bin Laden, whose attack on 9/11 Towers ushered in the Global War on Terror, drew tens of thousands of American troops to the country, where they remain today. In Afghanistan: What Everyone Needs to Know®, leading scholar Barnett R. Rubin provides an overview of this complicated nation. After providing a concise history of Afghanistan, he explores the various peoples and cultures of the country and its relations with neighbors like Pakistan and Iran. He also provides an authoritative overview of the conflicts that have plagued the country since the Soviet invasion. Both wide-ranging and pithy, this book explains why Afghanistan matters and what its possible future might look like.

Presenting case studies and comparisons across seven countries, this book addresses key questions as to the nature of state fragility, policies used to mitigate it, assessment of outcomes and prospects. It offers a novel empirical contribution in examining a range of distinct but interdependent dimensions of state fragility, not only focusing on questions of state legitimacy, capacity and authority, but also involving the economy and resilience to political and economic shocks, as well as at vital questions of context and diversity. Examining Afghanistan, Lebanon, Burundi, Pakistan, Sierra Leone, Papua New Guinea and Rwanda within the context of their different local circumstances, and within broader questions of global security, the book identifies unique factors that have played a part in their specific context and explores key drivers and dominant features. This book will be of key interest to scholars and students of state fragility and more broadly to students of politics, public policy, development studies, state-society relations, political economy, state building, peace and conflict studies, international studies, security studies regional studies., as well as NGOs and international organizations.

This book, by one of the most experienced authorities on the subject, presents a deep analysis of the very difficult current situation in Afghanistan. Covering a wide range of important subjects including state-building, democracy, war, the rule of law, and international relations, the book draws out two overarching key factors: the way in which the prevailing neopatrimonial political order has become entrenched, making it very difficult for any other political order to take root; and the hostile region in which Afghanistan is located, especially the way in which an ongoing ‘creeping invasion’ from Pakistani territory has compromised the aspirations of both the Afghan government and its international backers to move the country to a more stable position.

This book maps out how political networks and centres of power, engaged in patronage, corruption, and illegality, effectively constituted the Afghan state, often with the complicity of the U.S.-led military intervention and the internationally directed statebuilding project. It argues that politics and statehood in Afghanistan, in particular in the last two decades, including the ultimate collapse of the government in August 2021, are best understood in terms of the dynamics of internal political networks, through which warlords and patronage networks came to capture and control key sectors within the state and economy, including mining, banking, and illicit drugs as well as elections and political processes. Networked politics emerged as the dominant mode of governance that further transformed and consolidated Afghanistan into a networked state, with the state institutions and structures functioning as the principal “marketplace” for political networks’ bargains and rent-seeking. The façade of state survival and fragmented political order was a performative act, and the book contends, sustained through massive international military spending and development aid, obscuring the reality of resource redistribution among key networked elites and their supporters. Overall, the book offers a way to explain what it was that the international community and the Afghan elites in power got so wrong that brought Afghanistan full circle and the Taliban back to power.

In this book, based on field work undertaken in Afghanistan itself and through engagement with postcolonial theory, Bojan Savic critiques western intervention in Afghanistan by showing how its casting of Afghan natives as “dangerous” has created a power network which fractures the country – in echoes of 19th and 20th century colonial powers in the region. Savic also offers an analysis of how and by what means global security priorities have affected Afghan lives.

This timely Handbook examines the causes, costs and consequences of state fragility, advancing key debates in the field. Demonstrating the multidimensionality of fragility by applying diverse theories and methodologies, it provides new insights on effective policy development and application in the context of fragile states.

Based on unprecedented empirical research conducted with lower levels of the Afghan police, this unique study assesses how institutional legacy and external intervention, from countries including the UK and the US, have shaped the structural conditions of corruption in the police force and the state. Taking a social constructivist approach, the book combines an in-depth analysis of internal political, cultural and economic drivers with references to several regime changes affecting policing and security, from the Soviet occupation and Mujahidin militias to Taliban religious police. Crossing disciplinary boundaries, Singh offers an invaluable contribution to the literature and to anti-corruption policy in developing and conflict-affected societies.

A whole generation has grown up in Afghanistan knowing little but the ravages of war. The dramatic overthrow of the Taliban regime in 2001 was simply one event in a series of interrelated struggles which have blighted ordinary people's lives over the last three decades, and which continue to interfere with reconciliation and reconstruction. This new edition of The Afghanistan Wars provides a meticulously-documented history of these successive waves of conflict. From the roots of Afghanistan's slide into disorder in the late 1970s to the challenges faced by Afghan leaders following the substantial withdrawal of international forces in 2014, it explores military and diplomatic history while also offering valuable insight on humanitarian action, gender, medical and cultural themes. Thoroughly revised in the light of the latest research, the third edition also features a new final chapter which examines recent developments in Afghanistan, bringing the story up to the present day and mounting a strong case for continuing support for this troubled country. New to this Edition: - A final chapter on the recent developments in Afghanistan up to the present day - Revised to take into account the considerable amount of new material published on this topic since 2009 - Refreshed and updated throughout