Doomed to fail? The US and the Afghan State-building Project, 2001–2021

Nearly two decades after the US-led intervention in Afghanistan, following a massive effort to build an Afghan state, this very state structure collapsed in August 2021, and the Taliban took control. Why did the international state-building project fail? Could it have succeeded had the approach been a different one? Taking Astri Suhrke’s work as a point of departure, while also drawing on other key contributions (David Lake, Melissa Lee, Roland Paris), this article examines how the foundational dilemmas of external statebuilding materialised in the Afghan case, across the political, military, and economic domains. Historically, Afghan stability has rested on a balance between a weak central authority, with considerable influence resting with traditional societal actors. The US, as an external state-builder, was concerned with loyalty from a strong central power, and thereby undermined the division of power that could otherwise have gained a higher degree of legitimacy. The result is a state that was fully dependent on external support, and as the US entered a treaty with the Taliban, the Afghan state structure imploded.