ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that the astonishingly rapid, chaotic, and comprehensive collapse of the internationally recognized and well-funded Government of Afghanistan to Taliban insurgents in 2021, following the US announcement of a troop withdrawal, was rooted in a failed state-building project. The dramatic implosion of the young state was the culmination of two decades of futile efforts by Western powers and Afghan elites to build functional political institutions, resolve historically accreted ethnic tensions, and pacify rival claimants to the state’s authority. Instead of a strong, liberal, democratic state, a centralized but weak and sparse executive presided over a dysfunctional and deadlocked legislature; a marginalized judiciary; a factionalized military that was incapable of securing the country; and a donor-dependent, unsustainable formal economy characterized by endemic corruption and a corrosive informal economy in opium cultivation. In the wake of the official state’s collapse, the universally shunned Taliban regime has begun to re-institute a set of austere and brutal social policies seeking to subordinate women, minorities, and Westernized elites. With critical food shortages, an exodus of human capital, and the formal economy facing collapse, Afghanistan has a bleak future with no realistic prospect to cease being one of the poorest countries on earth. A weak and unstable Afghanistan has historically resulted in foreign intervention by regional and global powers, and the danger for the region and international community is that this sorry past could easily repeat itself.
