This book covers the period spanning the international invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 to the foreign military withdrawal in 2014. It explores and dissects the conflictual encounter between international troops, statebuilders and donors on the one hand, and Afghan elites and the wider population on the other. It brings together a group of leading experts and analysts on Afghanistan who examine the varied reasons behind the mixed and often perverse effects of exogenous state-building and reflects upon their implications for wider theory and practice. The starting point of the various contributions is a serious engagement with empirical realities, drawing upon extended experience and field research. Their exploration of the unfolding dynamics and effects of external intervention raise fundamental questions about the core premises underlying the state-building project.

This book was published as a special issue of Central Asian Survey.

Jonathan Goodhand is a Professor of Conflict and Development Studies at the University of SOAS. He has more than twenty five years experience of working in and on Afghanistan and has published widely on the political economy of conflict and peacebuilding. Mark Sedra is an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Waterloo and Balsillie School of International Affairs. He is also the Executive Director of the Centre for Security Governance, a non-profit think tank dedicated to the study of security transitions in fragile, failed and conflict-affected states.