State-Building Dilemma in Afghanistan, The

After nearly two decades of war, on February 2020, the Trump administration signed an agreement with the Taliban through which the US and its NATO allies’ troops must leave Afghanistan within the following few months. This agreement also paves the ground for Intra-Afghan talks between the US backed Islamic Republic of Afghanistan and the Taliban militant group.

This book critically reviews the US/NATO military, peace-and-state-building intervention since 2001 in Afghanistan. In addition, based on collected field interviews, it presents the Afghan perception and discourse on the topics such as democracy, Islam, women rights, formal and informal governance, ethnic divide and the state democratic governmental design at the national and subnational level.

Based on field interviews collected from six large Afghan provinces, this book explores an alternative state governmental design at the central level and examines the role of elected provincial councils for decentralization at the sub-national level in Afghanistan.