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Building a New Afghanistan

Author: Robert I. Rotberg

Publisher: Brookings Institution Press

Published: 2007-08-29

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 0815775652

A Brookings Institution Press and World Peace Foundation publication In the wake of the Taliban nightmare, Afghanistan must tackle serious problems before it can emerge as a confident, independent nation. Security in this battered state continues to deteriorate; suicide bombings, convoy ambushes, and insurgent attacks are all too common. Effective state building will depend upon eliminating the national security crisis and enhancing the rule of law. This book offers a blueprint for moving the embattled nation toward greater democracy and prosperity. Robert Rotberg and his colleagues argue that the future success of state building in Afghanistan depends on lessening its dependence on opium and enhancing its economic status. Many of Afghanistan's security problems are related to poppy growing, opium and heroin production, and drug trafficking. Building a New Afghanistan suggests controversial new alternatives to immediate eradication, which is foolish and counter-productive. These options include monetary incentives for growing wheat, a viable local crop. Greater wheat production would feed hungry Afghans while reducing narco-trafficking and the terror that comes with it. Integrating this land-locked country into the Central Asia or greater Eurasia economy would open up trading partnerships with its northern and western neighbors as well as with Pakistan, India, and possibly China. Developing a sense of common purpose among citizens would benefit the economy and could help to unite the nation. Perhaps most important, bolstering better governance in Afghanistan is necessary in order to eliminate chaos and corruption and enact nationwide reforms. Fresh and insightful, Building a New Afghanistan shows what the country's leadership and the international community should do to resolve dangerous issues and bolster a still fragile state. Contributors include Cindy Fazey (University of Liverpool), Ali Jalali (former minister of the interior, Afghanistan, and National Defense University), Hekmat Karzai (Centre for Conflict and Peace

After the Taliban

Author: James Dobbins

Publisher: Potomac Books, Inc.

Published: 2008

Total Pages: 254

ISBN-13: 1597979880

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In October 2001, the Bush administration sent Amb. James F. Dobbins, who had overseen nation-building efforts in Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, and Kosovo, to war-torn Afghanistan to help the Afghans assemble a successor government to the Taliban. From warlords to exiled royalty, from turbaned tribal chieftains to elegant émigré intellectuals, Ambassador Dobbins introduces a range of colorful Afghan figures competing for dominance in the new Afghanistan. His firsthand account of the post-9/11 American diplomacy also reveals how collaboration within Bush's war cabinet began to break down almost as soon as major combat in Afghanistan ceased. His insider's memoir recounts how the administration reluctantly adjusted to its new role as nation-builder, refused to allow American soldiers to conduct peacekeeping operations, opposed dispatching international troops, and shortchanged Afghan reconstruction as its attention shifted to Iraq. In After the Taliban, Dobbins probes the relationship between the Afghan and Iraqi ventures. He demonstrates how each damaged the other, with deceptively easy success in Afghanistan breeding overconfidence and then the latter draining essential resources away from the initial effort. Written by America's most experienced diplomatic troubleshooter, this important new book is for readers looking for insights into how government really works, how diplomacy is actually conducted, and most important why the United States has failed to stabilize either Afghanistan or Iraq.

Aid Paradoxes in Afghanistan

Author: Nematullah Bizhan

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-08-14

Total Pages: 199

ISBN-13: 1351692658

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The relationship between aid and state building is highly complex and the effects of aid on weak states depend on donors’ interests, aid modalities and the recipient’s pre-existing institutional and socio-political conditions. This book argues that, in the case of Afghanistan, the country inherited conditions that were not favourable for effective state building. Although some of the problems that emerged in the post-2001 state building process were predictable, the types of interventions that occurred—including an aid architecture which largely bypassed the state, the subordination of state building to the war on terror, and the short horizon policy choices of donors and the Afghan government—reduced the effectiveness of the aid and undermined effective state building. By examining how foreign aid affected state building in Afghanistan since the US militarily intervened in Afghanistan in late 2001 until the end of President Hamid Karzai’s first term in 2009, this book reveals the dynamic and complex relations between the Afghan government and foreign donors in their efforts to rebuild state institutions. The work explores three key areas: how donors supported government reforms to improve the taxation system, how government reorganized the state’s fiscal management system, and how aid dependency and aid distribution outside the government budget affected interactions between state and society. Given that external revenue in the form of tribute, subsidies and aid has shaped the characteristics of the state in Afghanistan since the mid-eighteenth century, this book situates state building in a historical context. This book will be invaluable for practitioners and anyone studying political economy, state building, international development and the politics of foreign aid.

US Nation-Building in Afghanistan

Author: Conor Keane

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-03-31

Total Pages: 353

ISBN-13: 1317003187

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Why has the US so dramatically failed in Afghanistan since 2001? Dominant explanations have ignored the bureaucratic divisions and personality conflicts inside the US state. This book rectifies this weakness in commentary on Afghanistan by exploring the significant role of these divisions in the US’s difficulties in the country that meant the battle was virtually lost before it even began. The main objective of the book is to deepen readers understanding of the impact of bureaucratic politics on nation-building in Afghanistan, focusing primarily on the Bush Administration. It rejects the ’rational actor’ model, according to which the US functions as a coherent, monolithic agent. Instead, internal divisions within the foreign policy bureaucracy are explored, to build up a picture of the internal tensions and contradictions that bedevilled US nation-building efforts. The book also contributes to the vexed issue of whether or not the US should engage in nation-building at all, and if so under what conditions.

Building a New Afghanistan

Author: Barnett R. Rubin

Publisher:

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 44

ISBN-13:

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Includes statistics.

Beyond Reconstruction in Afghanistan

Author: J. Montgomery

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2004-04-23

Total Pages: 251

ISBN-13: 1403981175

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The interaction of failed states, terrorism and the need for 'nation building' is at the top of the international agenda, with particular focus on Afghanistan and Iraq. This path breaking collection brings together top analysts to examine the goals and challenges facing efforts to reconstruct states that have collapsed into anarchy or have been defeated in war. Drawing on lessons from 50 years of past experience with post-conflict reconstruction and development around the world, the authors provide historical context, identify difficulties that can impede progress and recognize the realistic limitations of ambitions to create new states. They assess ongoing development plans in a country devastated by more than a century of conflict. Throughout, particular attention is paid to the interaction of the goals of external and domestic actors, highlighting the importance of understanding the internal social, economic and political environment of the society receiving assistance.

Getting it Right in Afghanistan

Author: Scott Seward Smith

Publisher: United States Institute of Peace Press

Published: 2013

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781601271822

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Building an enduring and stable political consensus in Afghanistan's complex, multiactor environment requires clear analysis of the conflict. Getting It Right in Afghanistan addresses the real drivers of the insurgency, how Afghanistan's neighbors can contribute to peace in the region, and the need for more inclusive political arrangements in peace and reconciliation processes.

Why Nations Fail

Author: Daron Acemoglu

Publisher: Currency

Published: 2013-09-17

Total Pages: 546

ISBN-13: 0307719227

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Brilliant and engagingly written, Why Nations Fail answers the question that has stumped the experts for centuries: Why are some nations rich and others poor, divided by wealth and poverty, health and sickness, food and famine? Is it culture, the weather, geography? Perhaps ignorance of what the right policies are? Simply, no. None of these factors is either definitive or destiny. Otherwise, how to explain why Botswana has become one of the fastest growing countries in the world, while other African nations, such as Zimbabwe, the Congo, and Sierra Leone, are mired in poverty and violence? Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson conclusively show that it is man-made political and economic institutions that underlie economic success (or lack of it). Korea, to take just one of their fascinating examples, is a remarkably homogeneous nation, yet the people of North Korea are among the poorest on earth while their brothers and sisters in South Korea are among the richest. The south forged a society that created incentives, rewarded innovation, and allowed everyone to participate in economic opportunities. The economic success thus spurred was sustained because the government became accountable and responsive to citizens and the great mass of people. Sadly, the people of the north have endured decades of famine, political repression, and very different economic institutions—with no end in sight. The differences between the Koreas is due to the politics that created these completely different institutional trajectories. Based on fifteen years of original research Acemoglu and Robinson marshall extraordinary historical evidence from the Roman Empire, the Mayan city-states, medieval Venice, the Soviet Union, Latin America, England, Europe, the United States, and Africa to build a new theory of political economy with great relevance for the big questions of today, including: - China has built an authoritarian growth machine. Will it continue to grow at such high speed and overwhelm the West? - Are America’s best days behind it? Are we moving from a virtuous circle in which efforts by elites to aggrandize power are resisted to a vicious one that enriches and empowers a small minority? - What is the most effective way to help move billions of people from the rut of poverty to prosperity? More philanthropy from the wealthy nations of the West? Or learning the hard-won lessons of Acemoglu and Robinson’s breakthrough ideas on the interplay between inclusive political and economic institutions? Why Nations Fail will change the way you look at—and understand—the world.

Building the Nation

Author: Heather S. Gregg

Publisher: U of Nebraska Press

Published: 2018-12

Total Pages: 365

ISBN-13: 1640121382

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Building the Nation draws from foreign-policy reports and interviews with U.S. military officers to investigate recent U.S.-led efforts to "nation-build" in Iraq and Afghanistan. Heather Selma Gregg argues that efforts to nation-build in both countries focused more on what should be called state-building, or how to establish a government, rule of law, security forces, and a viable economy. Considerably less attention was paid to what might truly be called nation-building--the process of developing a sense of shared identity, purpose, and destiny among a population within a state's borders and popular support for the state and its government. According to Gregg, efforts to stabilize states in the modern world require two key factors largely overlooked in Iraq and Afghanistan: popular involvement in the process of rebuilding the state that gives the population ownership of the process and its results and efforts to foster and strengthen national unity. Gregg offers a hypothetical look at how the United States and its allies could have used a population-centric approach to build viable states in Iraq and Afghanistan, focusing on initiatives that would have given the population buy-in and agency. Moving forward, Gregg proposes a six-step program for state and nation-building in the twenty-first century, stressing that these efforts are as much about how state-building is done as they are about specific goals or programs.

The Afghanistan Papers

Author: Craig Whitlock

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2022-08-30

Total Pages: 384

ISBN-13: 1982159014

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A Washington Post Best Book of 2021 The #1 New York Times bestselling investigative story of how three successive presidents and their military commanders deceived the public year after year about America’s longest war, foreshadowing the Taliban’s recapture of Afghanistan, by Washington Post reporter and three-time Pulitzer Prize finalist Craig Whitlock. Unlike the wars in Vietnam and Iraq, the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 had near-unanimous public support. At first, the goals were straightforward and clear: defeat al-Qaeda and prevent a repeat of 9/11. Yet soon after the United States and its allies removed the Taliban from power, the mission veered off course and US officials lost sight of their original objectives. Distracted by the war in Iraq, the US military become mired in an unwinnable guerrilla conflict in a country it did not understand. But no president wanted to admit failure, especially in a war that began as a just cause. Instead, the Bush, Obama, and Trump administrations sent more and more troops to Afghanistan and repeatedly said they were making progress, even though they knew there was no realistic prospect for an outright victory. Just as the Pentagon Papers changed the public’s understanding of Vietnam, The Afghanistan Papers contains “fast-paced and vivid” (The New York Times Book Review) revelation after revelation from people who played a direct role in the war from leaders in the White House and the Pentagon to soldiers and aid workers on the front lines. In unvarnished language, they admit that the US government’s strategies were a mess, that the nation-building project was a colossal failure, and that drugs and corruption gained a stranglehold over their allies in the Afghan government. All told, the account is based on interviews with more than 1,000 people who knew that the US government was presenting a distorted, and sometimes entirely fabricated, version of the facts on the ground. Documents unearthed by The Washington Post reveal that President Bush didn’t know the name of his Afghanistan war commander—and didn’t want to meet with him. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld admitted that he had “no visibility into who the bad guys are.” His successor, Robert Gates, said: “We didn’t know jack shit about al-Qaeda.” The Afghanistan Papers is a “searing indictment of the deceit, blunders, and hubris of senior military and civilian officials” (Tom Bowman, NRP Pentagon Correspondent) that will supercharge a long-overdue reckoning over what went wrong and forever change the way the conflict is remembered.