Afghanistan: A Seriously Disrupted State

Abstract

A striking feature of the post-Cold War world has been the dramatic increase in the number of states which, in a variety of ways, can be classified as disrupted. Of all these disrupted states, Afghanistan stands out as a rare case. This article has three objectives. The first is to look at variations in the form of the state, and forms of state-society interaction, and to outline what constitutes a disrupted as opposed to a cohesive state. The second is to examine the internal and external sources of "disruption" in Afghanistan, more specifically since the successful pro-Soviet communist coup of April 1978, followed by the Soviet invasion twenty months later, and since the US-led intervention in October 2001 in response to the al-Qaeda attacks in New York and Washington, DC, a month earlier. The third objective is to touch on some responses which are still available to the parties on the ground, drawing on lessons learned from the 1989 Soviet withdrawal. Show more