ABSTRACT
This concluding chapter summarizes the theory-driven analysis offered in the book and reflects on the contentious notion of peace in the Afghan context. The U.S. presidents, claiming that rationalist state-building models were universal, disregarded, and rejected ideas that were practised before the Taliban and, despite several opportunities, did not include the militant group in the creation of a unified Afghanistan. The chapter argues that the presence of the troops, contractors, and civilian officials of the U.S. and its allies in Afghanistan in the years after the invasion in 2001 solidified into a colonial-style occupation. The populace living under the Taliban rule, I argue, might not be able to resist the condition or the state cannot be described as peace and stability because the mere absence of direct violence cannot be called peace but as a relative calm. An alternative approach to peace is a state where the society is emancipated from hegemony and where discourses of all kinds exist in a symbiotic relationship – something that the Taliban do not appear to adopt.
