This research endeavors to critically study the state-building intervention in Afghanistan since the collapse of the Taliban regime in late 2001. 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.
While the 2004 Afghan constitution adopted a heavy unitary centralized state system, in practice, it continued an ethnopolitical elite power-sharing government agreed upon at the December 2001 Bonn conference. The findings of this study reveal that implementing a non-ethnic-party and merit-based democratically elected unitary government as envisioned in the 2004 Afghan constitution, would neither be accepted by the various ethnic groups and parties nor would it be backed by the regional and international partner countries.
This research also finds that the Afghan elected Provincial Councils (PC) in place since 2005 are constitutionally week and in some instances dominated by warlords and drug mafias. Nevertheless, they have proved significant to local governance in rural Afghanistan, improving political awareness, the mobilization and participation of women, government legitimacy, democracy, and economic development. If the Afghan government ever managed to make peace with the Taliban, curbed warlordism and corruption, then for implementing decentralization, the Afghan PCs are the most feasible democratic institution to build on.

Table of contents + reading sample

The author:
Haqmal Daudzai completed his Ph.D. at the Faculty of Law, Economics and Social Sciences at the University of Erfurt in Germany.

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