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Try Again, Fail Again, Fail Better?

1 War, the State, and the Post-Conflict Challenge in Afghanistan

Christopher Cramer and Jonathan Goodhand

ABSTRACT
This article investigates the challenges currently facing Afghanistan. It argues that post-conflict peace and reconstruction in Afghanistan may depend on a dramatic expansion of institutionalized economic interdependence: this will not necessarily require obeisance to standard international policy paradigms and it will have to draw on existing patterns of interdependence, even though many of these are rooted in brutally exploitative war economy conditions. The authors argue further that neither peace nor economic development will hold without a centralized, credible and effective state, that the emergence of such a state is a political problem more than a technical problem, and that it will depend on a monopolization of force by the state. Such developments cannot be envisaged without policy being based on a close reading of the long and decidedly non-linear, conflictual experiences in state formation and failure in Afghanistan, a history whose patterns and implications are summarized in this article.

INTRODUCTION

Economists commonly project a fantasy of perfectly competitive markets onto the real world, where it becomes a benchmark against which actual market institutions and behaviour look distorted. Equally, political scientists, political economists, and international financial institutions regularly project a fantasy of liberal states benignly providing basic services and public goods. Set against reality, this fantasy becomes a benchmark of good governance and, in an extraordinary double twist of self-deception, shared values. Where states fall short, the fantasy is often displaced onto decentralized, local governance structures. These common fantasies show a remarkable lack of historical memory and contemporary understanding. And they are never more common than at the beginning of so-called post-conflict moments.

1. From Samuel Beckett, Worstward Ho. Development and Change 33(5): 885909 (2002). # Institute of Social Studies 2002. Published by Blackwell Publishers, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK and 350 Main St., Malden, MA 02148. USA

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Arguably, international responses to the Afghan predicament after the fall of the Taliban are infected by such fantasies.2 This essay suggests an alternative basis for engagement. Three factors are central to our analytical and empirical framework: the state, the configuration of material interests, and violence. We argue that policy towards Afghanistan cannot treat the country as though it were in an isolation ward. For Afghanistan is clearly part of a regional conflict complex. The significance of this is that strategies of reproduction adopted by states play themselves out beyond national borders. Nation- and state-building in one country, for instance Pakistan, may derive benefits from violence, economic interest and state disarray in another, for example Afghanistan. The regional (and international) dimension of violence and state-building is one of the reasons for scepticism about the usefulness of the post-conflict tag. Indeed, the label usually describes a predicament in which violent social conflict changes its form and intensity, perhaps becoming more amenable to internationally sponsored reconstruction and reform efforts. Given high levels of violence in the aftermath of apparently successful peace settlements in countries such as El Salvador, Mozambique, Nicaragua and South Africa, it should be a basic expectation that in a post-conflict society, violence of one sort or another will continue to be one of the primary policy challenges. One reason is that in most countries after a formal peace deal the state still has not secured an effective monopoly over the means of violence.3 In the rest of this essay, we first develop our analytical framework and then discuss the history of violence, attempts at state-building, and material interests in Afghanistan. We argue, first, that peace is likely to depend on an institutionalized expansion of economic interdependence nationally and internationally, and that this requires effective centralized state formation. We then argue that it is impossible to understand states and state formation without a political and historical analysis of where states come from, and that violent conflict has been a central part of most long-term endeavours in state-building. This analysis suggests that international efforts must support the development of a state in Afghanistan that is capable of making effective interventions that, in turn, encourage the development of productive forces within the country. Next, we outline a brief history of conflict and experiences in state formation in Afghanistan. Finally, we draw out significant implications for international engagement with Afghanistan, which hinge on the promotion of a centralized, credible and effective state capable of tax

2. These fantasies often also project an ideal of a homogeneous community: the World Bank, for example, hopes it will be possible to develop a vision for reconstruction which reflects the aspirations of the people of Afghanistan and which is owned by the assistance community as a whole. As in other aspects of reconstruction, Afghans need to be in the drivers seat on this, it has to be their vision which we all buy into (Byrd, 2001). 3. For analyses of the peace dividend and the difficulties in realizing it, see Bruck et al. (2000); Gleditsch et al. (1996).

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collection and regulation and secure in monopolizing the legitimate means of violence.

WAR ECONOMIES AND POST CONFLICT RECONSTRUCTION

Milward (1984) pointed out that, despite the lack of a formal settlement, peace after World War II held far more successfully than after World War I. The key, he argued, was the astonishing expansion of economic interconnectedness among and between European peoples. This institutionalized interdependence was not bred by any single policy approach. The US Marshall Plan aid did come with pressure for more open trading regimes in Europe, but there was nonetheless considerable variety in national policies in trade, production and employment. This argument captures a much older belief that keeping people busy with economic activities would divert their more violent capabilities, that interests can weaken the darker passions (Hirschman, 1977). The same idea unites contemporary perspectives on appropriate post-conflict policies. For example, contributors to policy debates in the wake of transitions to peace in El Salvador (Boyce, 1996; del Castillo, 2001) and Mozambique (Cramer, 1999; Hanlon, 1996; as well as numerous World Bank and International Monetary Fund documents) display a common commitment to the idea that economic development with appropriate policies will play a significant role in consolidating peace. In other words, it is assumed that peace is a precondition for development but that recently-secured peace will probably remain fragile without significant economic development. Much of the post-conflict policy debate at the general level (Harris, 1999; Haughton, 1998; Marshall, 1997; Schierup, 1999) focuses on how best to promote an increasing intensity of economic encounters.4 Usually left implicit are underlying questions of the promotion of structural change and capital accumulation. Yet, economic history clearly demonstrates that all countries rapidly developing their economies have relied upon substantial and highly effective state interventions. This has not been a straightforward matter of the relative size of states.5 What has mattered more is the quality of state interventions, which in turn has depended on analytical capacity, on resource mobilization by the state, on the politics of the state, and on the balance of material interests driving that politics. States have had to promote particular
4. For a critical view of post-conflict reconstruction aid as a mechanism used to prise open markets to international capital, see Moore (2000). 5. Even where the state has been small in terms of public expenditure as a share of GDP or public ownership of enterprises, its decisive and systematic interventions have been extensive when examined more closely: Amsden (2001), for example, shows how much the South Korean state and economy owed to indirect interventions and off-budget expenditures (and, indeed, to nurturing value-enhancing market imperfections rather than developing towards more perfectly competitive markets).

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activities, whether or not they have undertaken productive activities themselves, and they have had to protect national interests in a context of extremely intense, even hostile, international competition. It is absurd to pretend that societies emerging from years of bitter and destructive warfare will seamlessly merge with the world economy, thriving simply on the signals of comparative advantage, without such intervention. Indeed, state intervention also matters to foreign capital. Multinational companies are typically still rooted in a home country and draw on the support of their home state (Glyn and Sutcliffe, 1999). They also require states in host countries to protect their accumulation, intervene to secure their footing in local and regional markets (for example, post-socialist Eastern Europe), provide physical security, regulate labour markets, and protect their interests through tax breaks and infrastructure investments (Amsden et al., 1994). Economic experiences in wartime add a particular twist to this argument. Contrary to the liberal interpretation of war (Milward, 1972), according to which war is always and exclusively negative in its impact, it has increasingly been acknowledged in recent years that the consequences of wars in developing countries are not exclusively negative. In wartime, most economic activities become more risky. This acts as a deterrent to some potential participants and raises the monopoly rent available to those few who are willing to take the risk. Thus are spawned wartime entrepreneurs, historically labelled profiteers, economic criminals and greedy warlords, but often builders of a basis for longer term, more legitimate economic success. Thus, too, in pockets of society (often substantial pockets) there is intense economic activity and interconnectedness during wartime. Small businesses take off (for example, delivering South African and Swazi beef and bacon to militarily and economically besieged consumers in Maputo, Mozambique). So does trade in military spare parts, mineral resource extraction and primary commodity production and trade (such as diamonds in Angola, timber in Cambodia, tantalite ore in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and, of course, opium in Afghanistan) (see Musah and Cooper, both this volume). Post-conflict policies need not only to recognize the existence of these economies, but also to appreciate how difficult it will be to change them. Awkward legal and political challenges are involved, especially when economic intensity has increased because of illicit commodities. Interests in the continuing production and trade of such commodities will be entrenched; skills and market connections that have enabled capital accumulation will not be easily transferable. Furthermore, there is no guarantee that capital will be reinvested within a country if market distortions are reduced (that is, if monopoly rents are dissipated by restructuring the market, legalizing the commodity, or trying to encourage or force people to switch into different markets with lower returns).6 The common responses of wartime
6. Among the few commentators who have explored this kind of challenge, see Collier (1995) and Paus (1995).

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entrepreneurs after a peace settlement have been to be to shift capital abroad, or to continue exploiting illicit or high-rent market opportunities with little state regulation, or to invest in speculative construction projects or poorly regulated financial sectors. In post-conflict economies, orthodox financial sector liberalization has thus often facilitated market behaviour that has undermined macroeconomic stability and economic expansion (Addison et al., 2001). The challenge is deepened by the fact that wartime capital accumulation is brutal. War is the most common contemporary form of primitive accumulation: examples from Sudan (Keen, 1994), Mozambique (Chingono, 1996), Israel/Palestine (Riddell, 2001) and elsewhere confirm the coercive extremes that underpin this activity. The asset portfolios (Collier, 1995) of these wartime accumulators are not built on arms length transactions but on slavery or extraordinarily oppressive working conditions, on fear and force. Under conditions of primitive accumulation, the distinction between interests and passions breaks down. Normally, successful wartime accumulation of this kind requires social organization and command over means of violence as a tool of accumulation and to protect interests. This is the basis for localized political interests and power relations, what Duffield (this volume) calls emerging political complexes, distinctly non-liberal foundations of material change and political interest. Primitive accumulation, if left alone, may well survive the formal end of a war and continue to thrive, even providing opportunities for escape from indigence for some people.7 Arguably, centralized authority is required in order to break up violent primitive accumulation and to protect the interests of the poorest in these conditions and bring about structural transformation. A decentralized governance system in which the state is pared down to the management of macroeconomic basics (and of the governmentdonor relationship) will not reduce the scope for regulatory capture by wartime accumulators. Central states, in contrast, provide some basis for political action oriented to poverty reduction and other goals (Putzel and Moore, 1999). Indeed, even an imperfect centralized state, corrupt and perhaps conniving with primitive accumulation activities, may be preferable (see Demetriou, this volume). At least it would offer a tangible focus for domestic political and international criticism. The policy challenges will remain immense. Given the allure of high returns to primitive accumulation and the social relations required to support it, the beneficiaries of war economies typically resist central interference and control. They resist a states mobilization of resources through military levies or through taxation. Sometimes, too, they resist peace and national power, since these may be incompatible with continued exploitation of opportunities for trade and production. Of course they may also become

7. See Goodhand (2000) on livelihoods sustained and shaped by the opium business in northeast Afghanistan.

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important influences on the state, pursuing and protecting their own interests through the state and hence affecting its capacity to generate longrun structural change. In short, the realities of wartime carried over into a post-conflict period make political tensions inevitable and postconflict violence, if not renewed war, highly likely.

WAR-MAKING AND STATE-BUILDING

A society can thus become locked into a set of tensions that has characterized most experiences of state formation since the late middle ages. Indeed, if there is anything to the neo-medieval label sometimes attached to contemporary conflicts, it is that these conflicts echo the political tussles that accompanied the beginnings of the formation of modern states. We have argued that there exists a range of reasons, aside from the politics of power, to encourage the formation of an effective central state in post-conflict societies. Yet there is, and will be, resistance to that effort. Central states make considerable demands on people, as Clapham (this volume) points out. Many people naturally resist these demands, and (at least) make their own claims upon the state. Historically, one of the keys to the successful endurance of nation-states has been state intervention to provide reciprocal benefits (public goods, for example), to settle some of these claims, and hence to manage a negotiation of resource allocation. This historical tension is crystallized in the politics of taxation and budget allocation (di John and Putzel, 2000).8 It is also important to note that the tensions around state-building efforts have always involved violence, and have always turned on an eventual credible monopoly of violence by the central authority. Mobilization efforts, claims upon the state, and state reciprocation have often been mediated through war (Howard, 2000). Yet, the outcome of this struggle around the organization of power and the allocation of resources is not historically pre-determined. Outcomes are likely to depend on the form of war and its technology, which affect the extent to which states need to mobilize people or funds. Outcomes will also turn on the interests of capital (domestic and foreign), on the extent to which states can mobilize resources through aid rather than through interacting with subject populations, and on the distribution of the means of violence. Finally, they will be affected by the ideological (including religious) resources at hand to enable the state to persuade people to accept its power and develop official nationalism (Anderson, 1991). For the construction of state hegemony over a society

8. Notably, World Bank and IMF documents from the conference on reconstruction in Afghanistan, in November 2001, stress currency unification and the formulation of a budget, though they have little to say on taxation.

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involves more than provision of infrastructure, education, and so on. It also involves ideological efforts to persuade people that the centralization of authority in the state is in their interests. This may materialize in anticolonial nationalism, in a nationalization of the societys past, or (with obvious relevance to the history of state-building efforts in Afghanistan) in the political use of religion to overcome fissiparous regionalism or ethnic rivalry. The post-conflict moment, such as it is, is therefore not simply one in which we stand back, take stock of the destruction and undoing, and go about re-building. It is instead a different phase in the long-term process of resolving state-building tensions. War and its post-war legacy are very much part of that process. In late medieval Europe, for example, states evolved towards modern forms through the management of these tensions while the nature of war itself was undergoing changes. As wars became more costly and technologically complex, states began to forego their earlier dependence on relatively small, often foreign mercenary militias, and to build up standing, national armies. Increasingly, states especially those that became the most successful also relied less on international financial mechanisms and turned to national mobilization of finances to fund wars. These two developments generated institutional changes, including the development of modern fiscal and welfare institutions (Mann, 1988; Tilly, 1992; see also Kolko, 1995 for twentieth-century developments generated by war). To argue that contemporary conflicts should be understood within a state formation perspective runs counter to the popular representation of todays wars as barbaric reversals of modernization or simple apolitical brutality (de Soysa and Gleditsch, 1999: 29). This historical perspective helps in understanding Afghanistan. First, it makes some sense of the Afghan past. Afghanistan, despite its relative lack of colonial experience, has never simply been a vacuum. Rather, as we will show later, it has experienced a series of contests over the locus of power, the distributional structure of violence, sources of political legitimacy, and state-building enterprises. Second, the framework reveals some of the risks of not backing fully a centralized state. These include continuously divisive violence within the country and a society in which most people remain trapped in chronic poverty, or at best draw precarious benefits from being bound in exploitative and coercive relationships with local warlords-cum-mafiosi. Third, the framework developed here reveals a major threat to any statebuilding exercise in Afghanistan. Afghanistan does not exist in a regional vacuum. Other states are also trying to develop their power and legitimacy; they may choose to build on aggression against Afghanistan. Most obviously, Pakistans state in recent years has based its own power and legitimacy on mobilizing military capacity, threatening war against neighbours, and thriving on violence inside Afghanistan. Iran is another regional state with a direct interest in violence in Afghanistan. This is the implication for state formation of acknowledging the significance of regional conflict complexes

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(Wallensteen and Sollenberg, 1998). Of course, the international role in Afghan state formation goes beyond the immediate region: most notably, in the last forty years the USA and the Soviet Union both managed to frustrate particular state-building episodes.

THE FITFUL EXPERIENCES OF STATE FORMATION IN AFGHANISTAN

What has been the history of conflict and state formation in Afghanistan? This section provides an overview of the key phases of Afghan state formation (and collapse), followed by an analysis of this history by elaborating the framework outlined above.

From Tribal Confederacy to Buffer State Located in the interstices of the powerful empires of Iran, the Indian subcontinent and Central Asia, Afghanistan originated as a tribal confederacy, established by the Durrani rulers between 1747 and 1798. War-making and conquest were key to this early phase of state formation. Ahmad Shah Durrani (174772) unified the Pashtun tribes by distributing the fruits of conquest. Rather than having a standing army, the ruler relied on a lashkar (tribal militia), which was decided upon by the council of clan chiefs (or jirga). The jirga, as a founding myth of the Afghan state, has been re-enacted in times of crisis (Roy, 1985). To an extent, the state was never able to escape the original principle which gave it legitimacy it was always to remain tribal and Pashtun.9 Within two generations of Ahmad Shah Durrani, the embryonic state was to unravel due to a succession crisis and the loss of foreign revenues from conquest. In a scenario that resonates with more recent events, Afghanistan underwent four decades of civil war and was divided into mini-fiefdoms, with neighbouring powers Persia, Burkhara and Punjab taking back territories lost to Ahmad Shah (Rais, 1998: 9). It was foreign invasion by the British in the first Anglo-Afghan war (183942) that once again united the Pashtun tribes against a foreign enemy. By the middle of the eighteenth century, with British imperial control in India and an expanding Tsarist Empire to the north, the imperial powers together demarcated the territory of Afghanistan in order to make it an effective buffer state. Although independent in internal affairs, Afghanistans foreign policy between 1880 and 1920 was, in effect, handled through the Government of India (Hyman, 1992: 41). Amir Abdur Rahman (18801901)

9. Afghanistan in the original sense denoted the areas where the Pashtuns settled and the word Afghan was used for the Pashtun tribes (Parvanta, 2001: 18)

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described his countrys precarious position as a goat between two lions (Abdur Rahman Khan, 1900, cited in Arnold, 1985: 2). Foreign subsidies, however, enabled Afghan rulers to consolidate their internal control. In 1882, for example the British granted Abdur Rahman a yearly subsidy of 1.2 million Indian rupees to employ conscripts as troops, which in turn enabled him to increase direct tax revenue from landowners. Potential opposition was defeated on the battlefield, fragmented or exiled. Tribal and Islamic traditions were co-opted to gain legitimacy. The loya jirga or national council was established and given a legally codified meaning. Abdur Rahman was recognized as imam, a leader of the Islamic community, and the claim of Islamic sovereignty was institutionalized by establishing sharia courts in all provinces. At the turn of the century the Amir left a consolidated, if terrorized, state to his successors.

State-Building in the Twentieth Century During the early twentieth century Afghanistan began to emerge from its isolation. In 1919, Afghanistan became a sovereign member of the state system. With the loss of the British subsidy there was a need to develop a domestic resource base. Amanullah (191929) regularized the system of taxation, instituted private property in arable land and pasture and initiated the development of a new transportation network. Afghanistans first constitution of 1921 reflected a trend towards strengthening the accountability and legality of the state with rights of universal citizenship being defined for the first time. Education was promoted although the initial impetus for this was security rather than enlightenment the first English language training, for example, was aimed at Afghans working with British experts setting up arms manufacturing in factories in Kabul. Schools became a vehicle for nationalist ideology and this period saw the beginnings of modern political movements. However, reforms partially inspired by Kemals revolution in Turkey were resisted by tribal and religious elites, as they struck at the heart of the religious establishment and sought to undermine the autonomy of the tribes. Unlike Abdur Rahman, Amanullah lacked external backing and, fatally, he did not make the armys strength and loyalty a top priority. A demoralized army failed to respond to rebellions in 1928, driven by religious and tribal opposition to his reform programme (a pattern repeated in 197879). Amanullah was briefly replaced by the Tajik Amir Habibullah Kakkani, and then in 1929 by Muhammadzai Pashtun Nadir Khan (Gregorian, 1967). From 1929 until the communist coup (Saur revolution) of 1978, the Musahiban family ruled Afghanistan. They assumed power after a breakdown of state control and the re-emergence of tribal powers. The 1931 constitution reflected this state of affairs, drawing a balance between gradual reform and an acknowledgement of the formal role of religious and tribal

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leaders in government. British grant aid in the 1930s helped them reestablish the army. The Musahiban regime between 1930 and 1960 achieved a modus vivendi between the competing interest groups of the state, traditional power groups and a new elite of bureaucrats and educated middle class (Oleson, 1995: 172). Partition of the British Empire left Pakistan as an existentially insecure state (Rubin et al., 2001). Pakistans quest for strategic depth in relation to India and the Pashtunistan question10 were to have an ongoing influence on relations between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Although Afghanistan pursued a policy of non-alignment (bi-tarafi both sides), the deterioration in relations between the two countries in the 1950s pushed Afghanistan into a closer relationship with Russia. This reinforced Afghanistans position as a rentier state, relying on foreign subsidies, previously from the British and then from the Soviet Union. The ruling elite was never forced to develop domestic accountability through internally derived revenue (Pain and Goodhand, 2002). From 1956 to 1978 the Soviet Union provided Afghanistan with US$ 1,265 million in economic aid and roughly US$ 1,250 million in military aid (Rubin, 1995: 22). The New Democracy period (196370) saw Prime Minister Daoud pressing ahead with a modernization policy that aimed to make the government more independent of the tribes and ulama. A new, more democratic constitution in 1964 marked the beginning of a period of growing political instability (Magnus and Naby, 1998: 47). In 1973 Daoud seized power and Afghanistan was declared a republic with King Zahir Shah forced into exile. Daoud felt that his new army and police were strong enough to confront the tribes and religious establishment. However, foreign aid undermined old patterns of social control. New elites emerged from aid-funded schools and the bureaucracy, who were to join the Islamist and Marxist movements. Ultimately foreign aid produced not only a rentier state, but also rentier revolutionaries (Rubin, 1996) with Russia and Pakistan supporting new elites who were opposed to the state, principally the Parcham and Khalq factions of the Peoples Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) and the Jamiat-I Islami and Izhahh Hizb-I Islami parties of the Islamist movements. In 1978, members of the PDPA gained power in a coup (Saur Revolution) and embarked upon a radical reform programme that provoked armed resistance in the countryside. A second coup followed in 1979 and with growing insurrection and a breakdown of social control, the Soviets invaded later that same year.

10. Afghanistan opposed Pakistan over the status of the Pashtuns who straddle the Afghan Pakistan border. Afghanistan argued that the tribal areas should have had the option of declaring independence as the nation of Pashtunistan. This proved to be an ongoing source of tension between the two countries, particularly during Daouds government.

The Post-Conflict Challenge in Afghanistan The State at War, War on the State PDPA Regime: A State under Siege

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The history of the Afghan conflict has been described and analysed elsewhere (see, for example, Hyman, 1992; Rubin, 1995, 1996). Here our focus is on what happened to the state during more than two decades of war. Both Russia and the United States poured far more resources into Afghanistan to sustain the conflict than they had ever devoted to co-operation for development. However, the PDPA regime did not fall until 1992, three years after the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan. Many analysts characterize the period of Soviet occupation as one of state breakdown. Despite massive support for the mujahedin,11 however, state institutions survived, although failing to fulfil many of their core functions. Urban areas came under the remit of the Soviet-backed regime while the mujahedin controlled much of the countryside. Competing leaders relied on opposing flows of politically motivated aid (Rubin, 2000: 1791). The state became even more dependent on foreign aid and sales of natural gas to Russia. Conversely, political parties in Pakistan and Iran interceded as logistical conduits between the local resistance commanders and fronts in Afghanistan. Western aid fostered a new leadership, with the emergence of commanders and the demise of the countrys intelligentsia and local khans (Fielden and Goodhand, 2001). The system of brokerage that developed around the arms pipeline laid the foundations for the regionalized war economy that was to emerge in the 1990s. Profits accumulated by commanders and traders were invested in illicit activities such as the drugs and cross border smuggling economies.

The Mujahedin Government: The Fragmentation of Afghanistan In April 1992, mujahedin forces took control of Kabul and installed a new government. Afghanistan was renamed the Islamic State of Afghanistan, in an attempt to give Islamic legitimacy to a centralized state (Oleson, 1995: 303). This marked a new phase of the conflict, in which the war mutated from a Cold War conflict into a regionalized civil war. The break up of the Soviet Union and the creation of the newly independent Central Asian states meant that Afghanistan lost the strategic position it had previously enjoyed as a buffer state and to an extent reverted to its previous position as a transmission zone with open borders crossed by trade routes. Neighbouring countries backed differing groups within the fragile mujahedin coalition, leading to the Lebanonization of Afghanistan (Roy, 1989). It became increasingly misleading to talk about the Afghan conflict. There were multiple
11. Between 1986 and 1989, for instance, total aid to the mujahedin for all sources exceeded US$ 1 bn per year (Rubin, 1995: 30).

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conflicts, which together formed a regional conflict system of interconnected zones of instability including Kashmir, Tajikistan and the Ferghana valley. During this period, the state did indeed collapse, reversing the statebuilding processes of the previous century. The minting of different currencies by opposing politico-military groups symbolized the fragmenting of sovereignty. An older pattern of governance re-emerged with the units of political and military action being ethno-regional coalitions, sustained by external support and internally generated resources from the expanding war economy. The Afghan economy became increasingly peripheralized with the economies of provincial centres becoming more integrated with neighbouring countries and Kabul becoming an economic backwater. As superpower support declined, warlords increasingly had to generate resources locally to fund their military activities. During this period the war economy expanded and Afghanistan became in effect a transport and marketing corridor for drugs and contraband. The fragmenting of authority became one of the main obstacles to a political settlement. The carrots and sticks of traditional inter-state diplomacy had limited influence on the motivations and actions of freewheeling non-state actors. Arguably regional strong men had few incentives to put the state back together. Peace would disrupt the systems of production and exchange that provided warlords and their followers with livelihoods. The case of Afghanistan (and several other warlord conflicts) shows how war-making, far from inevitably building states, can play into processes of state collapse. Afghan warlords were not proto-state builders driven by an ideological project. Violence became a means of controlling markets and creating a monopoly of predation. Conflict entrepreneurs also used ethnic and tribal allegiances as a basis for forging alliances or confederations.

The Taliban Regime The Taliban emerged in 1994, and between 1996 and 2001 controlled Kabul and roughly 90 per cent of Afghanistan, with the remaining territory under the United Front.12 In 1996, Mullah Mohammed Omar was named Amir, and in October 1997 Afghanistan became the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. The Taliban arose out of the parochial and conservative milieu of the madrasas (seminaries for training ulama). Marginalized by state modernization programmes in the twentieth century, the madrasas became reinvigorated by exile in Pakistan and the experience of warlord-dominated Afghanistan
12. The United National Islamic Front for the Salvation of Afghanistan was formed in 1996 as an alliance of the groups opposed to the Taliban. The president of the ousted government, Burhanuddin Rabbani, remained the president of Afghanistan and the titular head of the Front, although real power lay with Commander Ahmad Shah Massoud, the minister for defence (Human Rights Watch, 2001: 12).

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(Rubin et al., 2001: 17). The coming to power of the Taliban reversed prewar social relations with the countryside ruling the city. External actors were also key in the transformation of the Taliban into a dominant military and political force. Chief among these were official, quasi-official and private groups in Pakistan (Davis, 1998; Human Rights Watch, 2001). The Bhutto and Sharif administrations lent their military and political support because the Taliban was seen to be a Pashtun front sympathetic to Pakistans interests (Jan, 1999). By 1999, up to 30 per cent of the Taliban troops were estimated to be Pakistani volunteers (Rashid, 2000: 100); estimates in 2001 put the number of non-Afghan Taliban fighters at between 8,000 and 15,000 (Human Rights Watch, 2001: 11). Afghanistan became both a safe-haven and a training field for stateless internationalist Muslim fighters (Roy, 2001: 81), ensuring continued international isolation and destabilizing neighbouring states, particularly Pakistan and Uzbekistan. The relative security brought by the Taliban saw the further consolidation and expansion of the war economy. Afghanistan became the worlds major source of opium, production peaking at 4,600 tonnes in 1999. The Talibans control of the main roads, cities, airports and customs posts meant that they were able to establish a monopoly of violence and predation in Afghanistan. While abandoning many of the other core functions of the nation state such as welfare and representation, the Taliban maintained effective security and military capabilities. This relative order and security can be argued to have represented a state-building project that at least partly reversed Afghanistans collapse. Certainly, the Taliban employed many of the early state-building strategies of previous rulers, being intent on centralizing power, fragmenting regional alliances and drawing upon tribal solidarity networks. It is difficult to imagine any previous regime enforcing a poppy ban, as the Taliban did in 2000. The international community adopted contradictory positions in relation to the Taliban. On the one hand the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Assistance to Afghanistan (UNOCHA) conceptualized Afghanistan as a failed state and to an extent saw itself as a surrogate government. Aid programmes held out the promise of filling the void left by a collapsed state, through the delivery of health and welfare programmes for example. On the other hand the diplomatic arm of the United Nations, the United Nations Special Mission for Afghanistan (UNSMA), conceptualized Afghanistan as a rogue state, with the Taliban being credited with powers of centralization and political cohesion (Duffield et al,, 2001: 21). The fact that one of the few levers the international community had in relation to the Taliban was over the issue of international recognition, suggests that there was an interest in putting the state back together. Not least, this would have enabled access to international finance and major development projects such as oil and gas pipelines. At the time of writing, it is unclear what kind of political regime will emerge from the loya jirga process of June 2002. Although the Taliban

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regime had limited popularity or legitimacy, their removal rather than leading to better government may lead to no government. The centrifugal forces of warlordism, regional interference and the war economy may yet reassert themselves. On the other hand, it may be argued that a collapsed state which the removal of the Taliban precipitated may be a good thing if more perfect political communities emerge from the debris.
AN ANALYSIS OF A FAILING STATE

The trajectory of Afghan state-building has been one of punctuated equilibrium. Try again, fail again is an apt description of the Afghan statebuilding project over the last two centuries in that it has occurred not in linear and gradualist fashion, but rather in fits and spurts. Change has been the result of complex combinations of contingent factors. A famine in 1970 71, for example, was one such contingent factor, which undermined regime legitimacy leading subsequently to the Saur Revolution. Efforts to build a modern nation-state through mixtures of capital and coercion have been interrupted periodically by violent resistance and war itself has been a forcing house for accelerated political and social change. A careful reading of the history of Afghan state-building points to the salience of three factors (Milliken and Krause, this volume). These were the inability of state-builders to develop in a sustained way (a) a monopoly of violence; (b) a trajectory of development that provided wealth and welfare for its citizens; and (c) credible forms of representation and legitimacy. These will be examined briefly below. War, Order and Insecurity Territorial sovereignty has been an ideal to which Afghan rulers aspired but rarely, if ever, achieved in practice. Arguably, processes of internal colonization were never completed in Afghanistan because rulers lacked the military force to subdue the tribes or withstand external aggression. Ahmad Shah Durrani established the first Afghan standing army. From then on, the military, along with the schools, became the focus for a number of contests of authority between the state and the tribes. The tribal areas were some of the best recruiting grounds for the army because of the Pashtun valorization of warfare and the lack of economic opportunities there (Edwards, 2002: 55). The point of friction was always the terms of tribal participation, the tribes traditionally wanting to set the number of conscripts and to stay as tribal units. In practical power politics, the concept of might is right remains an essential ingredient of legitimacy, particularly so in tribal politics (Oleson, 1995: 301). The state schools and the military were the two main avenues through which deracinated tribal Afghans entered into the state apparatus

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(Edwards, 2002). Regimes that failed to develop a strong and loyal army were resisted and ultimately overthrown as, for example, in the case of Amunullah who failed to build the power base to push through his reform programme. In contrast, Daouds reform programme during the 1950s and 1960s had the strong backing of the armed forces. Soviet aid provided both the cash and weapons for the accumulation and concentration of the means of violence in a modern army and national police force (Rubin, 1996: 65). The first arms contract with the Soviet Union, worth US$ 25 million, was signed in 1956. By 1970, some 7,000 junior officers had attended either Soviet or Czech training programmes (Hyman, 1992: 29). This reliance on military force meant, however, that there were few civil and political institutions for mediating between state and citizens (see below), and that regimes were vulnerable to any changes in the loyalty and internal coherence of the army. For example, in 1978 under the PDPA regime, the army virtually disintegrated in a series of insurrections (Rubin, 1995: 120). We noted earlier the impact of changes in the technology of warfare on state-building processes. The arms pipeline and the subsequent arming of warlords by regional powers (Human Rights Watch, 2001) have had a profound effect on the Afghan polity and society. Warlords have access to sophisticated weaponry and lootable resources while fighters can be recruited for one meal a day. The means of violence became increasingly decentralized, driven by the centrifugal forces of neighbouring country interference and the war economy. This was the key factor behind state collapse in 1992. It was also why the Taliban initially received widespread support as they were seen as an alternative to the corruption and insecurity of mujahedin rule. They exercised power in the same brutal way as Abdur Rahman a century earlier. The state-building strategies of the regional powers have contributed to the fragmenting of authority in Afghanistan. Ironically, Pakistan in its search for strategic depth has suffered severe blow-back effects that have in turn undermined its own monopoly of force. Armed proto-Taliban groups have caused growing instability in Pakistan and may threaten the long-term security of the state (Maley, 2001).

Wealth and Welfare Enduring nation-states, besides building a monopoly of violence, develop the capacity to provide reciprocal benefits or public goods. The capacity of the Afghan state to mobilize and redistribute resources has always been limited. This dates back to its early history. The nineteenth century Afghan state, unlike India and Central Asia, did not undergo even a partial imperial modernization (Ali, 2000: 132). Whereas the British and Tsarist empires invested in transportation and communications to link the regions under their control to international markets, Abdhur Rahman pursued a policy of isolation. Such developments were seen as inimical to national security (Rubin, 1996).

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In the twentieth century, because Afghanistan relied on rentier income, there was limited organizational and political investment in developing a taxation system to generate internal incomes. During the 1960s internally generated state finances depended almost entirely on heavy duties levied on imported goods (as the merchant class was politically weak), rather than agricultural resources that formed the backbone of the economy. In 1972, for example, the two greatest single sources of national wealth agriculture and livestock yielded a mere 1 per cent of state revenues (Hyman, 1992: 32). This meant that Afghanistan suffered unduly from sudden disruptions of imports by closures of borders or by international crises (Hyman, 1992: 31). The administration was too weak and inefficient to alter the traditional pattern in rural areas, while in the southeast the price for tribal support in the civil war of 1929 had been precisely this favourable treatment of landed interests by the state. This bargain was upheld until the downfall of the Musahiban rulers in 1973. The welfare functions of the state which were funded through the unearned income of foreign aid played an important role in regime legitimation and maintenance strategies. Aid was used to support neopatrimonial redistributive structures. Foreign assistance projects favoured particular groups and regions, with most irrigation projects benefiting Eastern Pashtuns, for example. Khans in the countryside competed with one another for state patronage and government corruption contributed to a growing sense of grievance: from the perspective of both rulers and their subjects (rayat) an official government appointment at any level was seen as a means of extracting and accumulating wealth from the people and not one of dispensing the needed services for their citizens (ruaya) (Shahrani, 1998: 228). At the same time, however, government attempts to provide public entitlements in some cases actually undermined the legitimacy of the Afghan state. Education programmes contributed to frustrated expectations, while PDPA reforms such as land redistribution sparked off rebellion in the countryside. The development of the war economy has had a profound impact on entitlement configurations and the social structure. The war economy has led to a violent redistribution of wealth and assets. It tends to concentrate wealth and power primarily into the hands of commanders and the crossborder trucking mafia, and causes widespread impoverishment. It also undermines the economies of neighbouring countries cross border smuggling, for instance, circumvents Pakistans customs duty and sales tax with its consequent impacts on revenue collection and the undercutting of local producers (Pain and Goodhand, 2002: 28).

Representation and Legitimacy Whilst a monopoly of violence may be a precondition for Afghan statebuilding, the external search for resources to buttress state power skewed the

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relationship between state and society. Rentier economies with access to conflict goods do not have to build up a social contract with their citizens. By the 1960s, Afghan society had become increasingly divided between an urban, educated elite dependent on an externally-funded state sector and a rural, illiterate population engaged in subsistence agriculture. This is not to say that Afghan society was static. Since the end of the last century, migrations, evictions and modifications to the social structure itself have thrown the country into turmoil (Roy, 1985: 12). The war has also produced profound social transformations (Goodhand, 2000). Moreover, the statesociety dichotomy wrongly implies that the two are completely separate and autonomous, whereas (as discussed below), interactions between them often led to a blurring of lines, with for instance tribal solidarity groups colonizing the state. In seeking to supplement rentier bargains and lessen the need for coercion, rulers (and revolutionaries) have employed three main modes of persuasion to gain legitimacy tribalism, Islam and nationalism (Roy, 1985: 14).

Tribalism Tribalism, as a tool for generating legitimacy, is a doubled-edged sword. Whilst it may buy short-term room for manoeuvre, tribal systems do not provide stable institutionalized bases of power. They are fragmented structures subject to fluctuations and fissure. This has been one of the dilemmas of tribally-based state builders. There is a Pashtun proverb: Honour (nang) ate up the mountains; taxes (qalang) ate up the plains (cited in Rubin, 1996: 28). The qalang Pashtun are subjects or rulers of states they pay or collect land rent and taxes. The nang Pahstun, however, are free of domination by others. Most acts of antistate violence originated from the Pashtun tribal belt.13 Interference by the state in the domestic sphere was particularly sensitive as Amanullah and the PDPA found to their cost. As well as violently resisting state power, tribal structures have historically attempted to subvert or co-opt the institutions of the state. Solidarity networks or quam colonized state institutions: The state was no more than a stake in a larger game and the strategy of a quam consisted in establishing an advantageous relationship with the institutions of the state (Roy, 1985: 24). A range of strategies was employed by rulers to co-opt or manipulate tribal networks when they served the rulers interests.14 The loya jirga, for

13. The PDPA regime was acutely aware of this when it first came to power and made conciliatory gestures to tribal elders from the East (Edwards, 2002). 14. The PDPA regime, however, neglected the culture, traditions and parochial identities of the people (Oleson, 1995: 302). By failing to draw upon symbols and make appeals that peasant society could understand, the PDPA never developed a wider support base in society.

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instance, while appealing to tribal traditions, is historically speaking a young phenomenon and owes its existence less to inherent Pashtun traditions than to the political needs of the centralized state (Noelle-Karimi, 2001: 37).15 Other strategies aimed to distance the state from tribal influences. The Durrani Pashtuns, for example, chose to relocate the capital to Kabul to escape from local Pashtun domination to which Kandahar was subject (Hyman, 1992: 20). Similarly, it was the practice of the government to appoint officials in the provinces from outside the area and to rotate them regularly. In the twentieth century, rulers attempted to create a detribalized elite through the education system. The emergence of deracinated, detribalized Talibs from the madrasas of Pakistan is in some ways a bizarre inversion of this process:
Their simple belief in a messianic puritan Islam was the only prop they could hold onto and which gave their lives some meaning. This deracinated fanaticism a kind of bleak Islamic cosmopolitanism made the Taliban a more effective fighting force than any of their localized adversaries. Although Pashtun in origin, the Taliban leaders could be sure their young soldiers would not succumb to the divisive lure of ethnic or tribal loyalties of which even the Afghan left had found it difficult to rid itself. (Ali, 2000: 136)

The conflict caused shifts in the ethnic power balance and Pashtun hegemony was challenged by a new assertiveness of the minorities. War provided an opportunity for those on the margins to advance their position. However, the Talibans arrival led to a violent re-balancing of power back in favour of the Pashtuns. This was again reversed with the removal of the Taliban who were replaced by a United Front dominated interim authority. While the origin of the war may not be ethnic, the politicization of ethnicity has had a corrosive effect on the potential for national reconciliation (Fielden and Goodhand, 2001).

Islam The nation, or millat, is seen as a religious community (umma) by the great majority of Afghan peasants. Legal authority is vested in Islam, and the faith requires a strong central power to defend the community of believers against infidels. This becomes more important during times of crisis and the notion of struggle or jihad has been used as a mobilizing ideology by rulers and revolutionaries. The Afghan state as the arbiter of the faith draws legitimacy from Islam. State, religion and politics are intrinsically connected (Oleson, 1995: 298).

15. Noelle-Karimi (2001: 47) argues that the loya jirga proved particularly efficient at times of political stability, enabling those in power to give their rule the veneer of broad popular acceptance. This also points to the limitations of the loya jirga as an instrument for peace in a setting devoid of functioning state institutions.

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Rulers such as Abdur Rahman drew upon Islamic heritage to sanction the centralized state and create a political community that transcended the parochial identities of tribe, ethnic group and local community. Religious leaders have historically occupied a position on the margins between tribe and state. Charismatic ulama have repeatedly mobilized the tribes against external enemies (as for instance during the wars against the British) or against reforming Afghan rulers. The growing secularization of the state in the 1960s met religious opposition, not from the ulama but from Islamists who emerged from the university campuses and schools after 1965. Their vision of Islam was different from the religion of the village. It involved a perception of Islam as a political movement aiming to address society in its entirety. In this sense, Islamism is a modern movement (Roy, 1998: 199). The Islamists influence peaked in the 1980s and their political parties attracted the bulk of western aid to the mujahedin. But after the Soviet withdrawal, the subsequent fall of the PDPA regime and the failure of the mujahedin to establish an Islamic state, there was a general decrease in the influence and militancy of the Islamist movement. The neo-fundamentalism of the Taliban emerged following the crisis of political Islam (Roy, 2001). As with previous Afghan rulers, the Taliban harnessed Islam to consolidate their power. Mullah Mohammad Omar was designated Amir al-Mumunin or Leader of the Faithful in a similar manner to Abdur Rahmans assertion of his divine right to rule in the nineteenth century. While the Taliban may have been removed, the processes of Talibanization or radicalization of Islamic groups continue within the region.

Nationalism Many of the trappings of nationhood such as the national anthem, flag and the celebration of a national day were introduced at the turn of the century. Like other modes of legitimation, nationalism served particular interests. Afghan nationalism was essentially Pashtun nationalism. Musahiban rulers used the resources obtained from international connections to create a patronage network calculated to strengthen Pashtun nationalism (Rubin, 1996). Daoud instrumentalized a nationalist discourse to keep the issue of Pashtunistan alive, while non-Durrani Pashtuns saw it as a means of wresting a monopoly of power from the establishment. The Taliban similarly attempted to mobilize around a Pashtun nationalist discourse. Historically such attempts to enforce conformity to Pashtun culture were resisted by Persian speakers (Shahrani, 1998), and undermined the legitimacy of the regime in the eyes of the minorities. State modernization constituted a second strand to the nationalist discourse. The Young Afghan movement of the 1920s was an early product of the state education programme in Kabul. The administrative elite however remained almost totally without political power to a much greater degree

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than colonial territories in the region. This contributed to disaffected and competing elites. The expanded, foreign-funded education system of the 1960s produced a nationalist youth, who instead of becoming government functionaries, became revolutionaries. Islam and communism were products of this modernist discourse. The experience of the PDPA regime is instructive. While its lack of a monopoly of force may have been decisive, it also mishandled the symbolic apparatus of power (Edwards, 2001: 86). A fatal mistake for instance was to use womens rights as a banner issue interference in domestic matters and cultural practices violated a basic tenet of governance in Afghanistan. In addition, the adoption of the red flag and Soviet inspired insignia further undermined its legitimacy.

FAILING BETTER? THE POST CONFLICT CHALLENGE

Early in this essay, we questioned the donor fantasy of minimal, liberal states. The one size fits all prescriptions flowing from the analyses underpinning this fantasy strip the state of its historical context and assume that institutions, state capacity and governance are purely technical, depoliticized entities. However, the analysis above shows that these processes have been decidedly non-linear and profoundly political; they have also been affected by intricately intertwined global, regional, national and local forces. In this, Afghanistans history confirms a more realistic pattern of state formation rooted in conflict and contingency. The post-Taliban moment presents a new and dramatic opportunity for forging less violent statesociety relations. International contributions to taking advantage of this opportunity must be based on an appreciation of the history outlined in this paper: otherwise, we argue, international policy prescriptions and interventions are likely to reinforce, rather than counteract, the dynamics that have repeatedly undermined state-building endeavours in Afghanistan. In short, post-conflict interventions are more likely to repeat history if they do not effectively reflect on that history. A number of key implications follow from the analysis and argument presented here. Afghanistan needs a centralized, credible and effective state if it is to accelerate economic development and poverty reduction, if it is to consolidate peace, and if it is to reduce the scope for extremes of brutality and exploitation in social and economic relations. The fiscal and regulatory policies that would be involved mean that creating such a state is more than a technical capacity-building exercise: it is ineluctably political and will generate conflict. The credibility of a state-building project, then, will depend on the coercive potential of the state: the state must monopolize the means of violence. The remit of the Afghan state has always been shaky because of its inability to establish a monopoly of force. The collapse of the state was part cause and part consequence of the decentralization of violence after

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1992. The danger of a back to the future scenario, with a return to the warlord period, is very real. International interventions may make this more or less probable. The US-led coalitions arming of tribal militias in the south, for instance, is likely to undermine the position of the central state. A holistic and comprehensive approach to the security sector is required, as opposed to a piecemeal approach which separates out security from the wider issue of governance. Fiscal, regulatory and allocative decisions of the state will be affected by the complex set of incentives and disincentives for peace. International support for policy formulation has to be based on a sophisticated understanding of those incentives. For example, how aid is delivered may tip the balance between a warlord choosing to become part of the government or continuing to control processes of accumulation within his own fiefdom. Institutions of governance also need to be developed in the context of Afghan history and social relations rather than simply implanted from offthe-peg models of liberal democracy. If institutions are not merely incentive mechanisms but also the residue of conflict resolution, then they will presumably be more effective if they reflect the specific matrices of incentives in Afghanistan and if they reflect and manage Afghan political conflicts. Elections, for example, should not be viewed as the be-all and end-all of good governance and consolidation of peace. In a number of post-conflict settings, they have been de-stabilizing and counter-productive (see Ottaway, this volume). Decentralized or federal systems may sound attractive, but they are likely to lead to massive tensions in Afghanistan between the centre and regions and to be inherently de-stabilizing. Without a strong central state, a criminalized war economy will merely become a criminalized peace economy. Evidence suggests that this is already happening: as of May, 2002 there were frequent violent clashes between warlords vying for territory and influence, autonomy from the state, and power within it (Carroll, 2002). The credibility of the state will depend not just on its monopoly of violence but also on developing political legitimacy. Afghanistans history, for example, shows that there may be limits on how far certain kinds of social and economic reform can be taken without riding roughshod over entrenched and potentially violent sets of interests. Economic growth, an institutionalized expansion of economic interdependence, might provide one source of legitimacy. Drawing again on the echo of post-World War II Europe, at that moment rapid economic expansion was the only available source of legitimacy for European governments in the wake of war and the failure of various alternative legitimating ideologies (Milward, 1984). The international community might, therefore, underwrite a dramatic momentum of increased and institutionalized economic interdependence in Afghanistan, building on existing networks of interdependence but shifting their institutional basis in violence, extreme exploitation, and illicit activities. To give one example: massive investment would be required in infrastructure concentrated in areas of high export potential. Attracting back educated

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Afghans is likely to be a central challenge and this depends largely on the provision of basic security and the states ability to mobilize and redistribute resources. A decentralized and criminalized economy is no basis for genuine social and political legitimacy, let alone poverty reduction and social progress. Additional sources of legitimacy in Afghanistan nationalism and Islam are likely to continue to be important modes of persuasion for Afghan leaders: however, as we have shown, both can have ambiguous consequences. Any huge investment commitment of this kind has to take account of the regional dimensions of conflict in Afghanistan and of the established regional patterns of economic activity. The state-building strategies of regional powers have contributed to state collapse in Afghanistan. These states are themselves in many respects failing states, and international donors will need to address the problems of security at a regional level. Although it may be somewhat ironic, given the international communitys history of either fuelling or ignoring the Afghan conflict, there is unlikely to be any semblance of stability in the region without an international guarantor. In effect, this means strong United States backing for the United Nations. This would enable the development of a state that, on the one hand, could withstand the intrusive interests of regional states and, on the other hand, could develop investment, tax, and employment linkages around regional economic interdependence. Although it may be a truism, the problems of the state in Afghanistan are rooted in complex, context-specific, historical processes yet policies currently being encouraged are simply read off from tried and unaccountably trusted paradigms. To sustain the comparison with Europe at the end of World War II, it is worth stressing the variety of policy packages allowed for under the broad remit of the Marshall Plan. There remains one hugely significant risk in international aid to Afghanistan. For as we have shown, reliance on international funding has typically, in the past, encouraged versions of the Afghan state to forego the evolution of reciprocal relations with the variety of interest groups in the country, not needing to mobilize the resources for its own reproduction from those groups and, consequently, having less incentive to deliver reciprocal benefits, public goods or development. In other words, without due attention to the real politics of Afghanistan, there is every danger that international aid supporting the state capacity will simply reproduce a state incapable of managing the conflicting interests passed down the generations and reshaped by two decades of war.

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Christopher Cramer is a lecturer in the Department of Development Studies, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square, London WC1H 0XG, cc10@soas.ac.uk. His current research interests include the political economy of war and rural labour markets and poverty in Southern Africa. Jonathan Goodhand is a lecturer in Development Practice in the Department of Development Studies at SOAS, University of London. He has managed aid programmes in Afghanistan, Central Asia and Sri Lanka and conducted research and published on aid, conflict and peacebuilding.

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