The Collapse of State in Afghanistan: A Repeat of History?

Introduction

The brazen military takeover of Afghanistan by the Taliban and the devastating images of people holding onto departing military airplanes at the Kabul Airport depicted the utter desperation, fear and abandonment that many Afghans felt. These images were also indicative of the collapse of the Afghan state; a fairly modern republican state established 20 years earlier by a grand coalition of rival political parties and through enormous assistance from the international community.

Contrary to common belief, the state of Afghanistan did not fall overnight. It happened in ‘two ways, gradually, then suddenly’. This famous passage from Ernest Hemingway’s novel best describes the collapse. It started gradually in 2014 and then took a sharp, sudden, and unfortunate turn in the summer of 2021. The unexpected and instantaneous fall was precipitated by a chain event starting on 29 February 2020 when the Trump administration signed a peace deal with the Taliban, effectively elevating an insurgent-cum-terrorist group into a semi-state entities (Lefebvre, 2021). It was further exacerbated by President Biden’s 14 April 2021 announcement of the unconditional and total withdrawal of the remaining US forces’ support of the Afghan security forces (Biden, 2021b). While Biden and his close aids squarely put the onus on President Ghani for fleeing the country and Afghanistan’s National Security Forces for not putting up a stronger fight against the Taliban, most Afghans and regional stakeholders blame the irresponsible and inconsiderate manner in which the US pulled the plug and abandoned its allies and partners in Afghanistan.

The roots of the gradual part, however, can be attributed to the flawed process of state-building in early 2002 and several missteps by the Afghan government and other international stakeholders ever since, particularly after the fraudulent 2014 presidential election. The cracks in Afghanistan’s winner-takes-all system, highly centralised state structure and troublesome single non-transferable electoral system (SNTV) appeared during the second presidential election in 2009. However, there was neither a political will on the part of the international community, the UN, and the Afghan government’s leadership at the time, nor was there an accessible and independent legal resort within the highly centralized constitution for the opposition to seek reform.

On the other hand, the ultimate collapse of the Afghan state after four consecutive elections and investments worth up to billions of dollars towards propping up a democratic institution once again raises the debate over the liberal internationalist project of state-building and democratisation. While some academia and policymakers criticised the model—an over-centralized presidential system (Acemoglu, 2021; Vendrell, 2012)—others questioned the overall attempt of building a modern nation-state in a society dominated by a tribal cultural-historical resistance to modern notions of legitimacy and institutions (Beaton, 2021; Walt, 2013). President Biden even went further and questioned the whole concept of unifying different groups under one state in the country (Blackwil, 2011).

While it is difficult to separate the sudden collapse from the gradual one as the former is in many ways connected to the latter, the abrupt disintegration of the state, the speed and ease with which the Taliban took over the country astonished even the most sophisticated intelligence agencies (Salama & Strobel, 2021). It cannot be only explained by structural and socio-economic factors. Hence, the demise of the highly centralised and increasingly personalised government which in its last years was referred to as ‘a republic of three men’ can be explained by its immediate functional and deep-rooted structural shortcomings.

The Immediate Causes: A Military or Political Collapse

Infiltration of the Haqqani network’s elite brigade, the Taliban’s tribal militias incursions into the eastern and southern suburbs of Kabul and the flight of President Ghani and his close aides on the morning of 15 August 2021 triggered a panic leading to the disintegration of the state and a chaotic evacuation. Since then, several high-ranking former government officials, security commanders and foreign correspondences have offered their accounts of the event and its proceedings; however, a definitive report has yet to emerge.

As President Kennedy once remarked, ‘victory has a hundred fathers, and defeat is an orphan’. Every single account of the collapse of Kabul by high officials passes the blame onto other individuals, institutions, or groups. From the perspective of military leaders, it was all a political and diplomatic failure (Sadat, 2021) while politicians criticise the military apparatus for their mishandling, lack of discipline and morale (Biden, 2021a).

The Military Factors

As of July 2020, the total number of Afghanistan National Defence and Security Forces (ANDSF)—an umbrella term denoting the combined security personnel of the Afghan National Army (ANA), the Afghan National Police (ANP), the Afghan Air Force (AAF), and the Afghan Special Security Forces (ASSF)—was estimated to be at 288,702 strong (Schroden, 2021).

While the ANDSF enjoyed a clear superiority in numbers, training equipment, and technology, it suffered from an overreliance on foreign technical and logistical support and faced acute challenges of politicisation, discipline and leadership, and low morale. The force was initially established as a regular standing army intended to secure the population and a vast ragged territory, not as an agile, quick-reaction force capable of controlling and suppressing an insurgency. According to Ali Ahmad Jalali, professor at the War College and former Afghan interior minister (2003–2005),

the initial false assumption that the conflict was over had a profound effect on the establishment and development of Afghanistan security forces. Planning for their size and capacity was based on an assessment of short-term political and security conditions that ignored the potential of strategic changes in the area, such as an upsurge in insurgency and activity of non-state armed groups and the dynamics of ongoing conflict. (Jalali, 2016)

As the Taliban and Al-Qaeda resurged in the border areas of Afghanistan and Pakistan a few years later, the US and NATO began adjusting the numbers of ANDSF personnel until it reached its peak at 352,000. From day one, ANDSF was overly dependent on the financial, technical and logistical support of the US/NATO forces in Afghanistan. On air transport, surveillance and airpower, the Afghan army was completely relying on US/NATO air assets and capabilities. Between 2011 and 2014, as part of the transition of security responsibilities from NATO, a small air force and a special operation corps were added to ANDSF’S structure. While the special operations force rapidly evolved into a strong and disciplined unit and proved effective in counterterrorism and rescue and evacuation operations, their technological and operational model and commando night raids created more, not less dependency on the US military and private contractors. In the past 2 years, while the rest of the ANDSF became highly dependent on the air force and special operation forces, the latter themselves were still heavily reliant on the technical and logistical support of US personnel.

The Downfall of the ANDSF

While the most cited immediate cause of the rapid downward spiral of the ANDSF has been the sudden removal of the US close air support and technical and logistical assistance (Cordesman, 2021; Weinstein, 2022), middle-rank policy officers and field commanders that spoke with the author argued that the following systemic and nuanced factors also contributed to the drastic loss of cohesion and morale:

On the operational side, the annual military campaign plan for (1399) 2020 operation Qiyam released on 5 February 2020, was suddenly recalled and replaced by a series of joint orders bringing the ANDSF into a defensive posture to comply with the US–Taliban agreement on a so-called ‘reduction of violence’. While the Taliban did not honour its RIV commitments and continued to consolidate its positions, this abrupt change created organisational and moral confusion among the ranks and files of the armed forces (Department of Defense, United States of America 30).

The factors above illustrate the depth and breadth of operational, managerial and technical challenges the ANDSF endured for several years. However, the force demonstrated unequivocal resilience and willpower in the face of all adversities and a soaring rate of fatalities. The existential question which the ANDSF could not overcome by bravery and endurance was

were the Afghan armed forces meant to fight against an insurgency that was aimed at substituting the elected government, or were the Taliban just one of the constituencies within Afghan ethnic mosaic and society, which the government should deal with, on an equal-status with itself as an autonomous political entity? (Lefebvre, 2021)

Taliban’s Military Offensive

By the summer of 2020, thanks to the Doha deal, The Taliban were at the zenith of their military and political strength. Their active force was estimated at around 70,000, including well trained red brigades, suicide squads and young students from religious seminaries across the border in Pakistan’s tribal areas.

Contrary to their promises under the Doha agreement to reduce violence in Afghanistan and despite the constant pleas from the international community, including NATO’s Secretary-General, the Taliban opened a complex and intense spring offensive in early May 2021 (Brown & Haidary, 2021). The offensive began by first moving into the central border districts and border crossings facilities in the north with the central Asian republics of Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, and then in the west with Iran and in the south with Pakistan. The offensive effectively cuts land connections with neighbouring countries and deprived the government of its main consumption revenues. In the next phase in early July, the Taliban concentrated their attack on the major provincial capitals. These large-scale attacks started after the group was assured of a complete withdrawal of troops, and end of US’s close air support to ANDSF in Afghanistan.

With disarray and frustration in the ranks and file of ANDSF due to constant leadership changes, corruptions, attrition, high level of casualties and above all, loss of morale and cohesion, the Taliban used their sleeping cells within the armed forces and support influential local elders. They even offered payments to persuade military commanders to surrender. These tactics worked particularly well initially in some regions (Zucchino & Rahim, 2021). However, later, the news of such events triggered a domino effect in other areas and played a crucial role in the fall of Kabul.

Meanwhile, parallel to the US diplomatic rapprochement with the Taliban, some neighbouring and regional countries that kept covert channels of communication and supplies with the insurgents increased their military and financial support. They became more creative and open in providing supplies to the Taliban, often under the pretext of fighting the so-called ISK (Members of the Afghanistan Study Group, 2021).

Political and Diplomatic Factors

Despite the convincingly detrimental military factors, the overwhelming majority of policymakers and experts argue that the 15 August 2021 collapse was primarily a political and diplomatic failure closely linked to the lopsided Doha peace talks. The Trump Administration, as part of its unorthodox quest for making deals with rogue actors, reinvigorated the previously unsuccessful Doha talks, which were initially established by the US and a few of its European allies since 2010. In September 2018, the State Department appointed Afghanistan-born US diplomat Zalmay Khalilzad, a Republican who previously served as the US ambassador to Afghanistan, Iraq, and the UN, as its Special Representative for Afghanistan’s Reconciliation.

After 18 months of often secretive exchanges with the Taliban and open pressures on the Afghan government, the talks culminated into a framework agreement signed between the US and Taliban representatives in Doha, Qatar on 29 February 2020. The deal was hailed by the Trump administration, the UK government, and the NATO officials as a momentous and historic day and a first step in ending their long war in Afghanistan.

However, according to Francesco Lefebvre, the deal, whose annexes are still classified, ‘has been signed between the government of the US and the representative of a non-recognized militarised insurgency force’. Although in the agreement the other party is repeatedly defined as ‘the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan which is not recognized by the United States as a state and is known as the Taliban’, it seems reasonable to say that the US Government, by signing the agreement, has effectively given de-facto recognition to the (Taliban) ‘Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan’ (Lefebvre, 2021).

The Doha agreement conferred unprecedented recognition to the Taliban and openly dismissed the then legitimate and internationally recognized government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan in favour of ‘a new post-settlement Islamic government, without offering a credible mechanism toward achieving such a political settlement in the first place’ (Agreement for Bringing Peace to Afghanistan between the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan Which Is Not Recognized by the United States as a State and Is Known as the Taliban and the United States of America). Accepting the Taliban’s demand to exclude the Afghan government from the process, Bruce Riedel argued that ‘the Trump administration betrayed our ally and elevated the Taliban to our equal’ (Riedel, 2020).

The provisions of the agreement further debilitated the domestic legitimacy of the Afghan government, which was already suffering from a weak mandate and the lowest electoral turnout of around 20% of eligible voters since Afghanistan’s first presidential election in 2004. The deal also lured the Afghan political elites, such as former Mujahidin leaders, the former President, members of the parliament, and local power brokers who were long offended by President Ghani’s ideological political agenda and eccentric personality to actively undermine the government or, at best, remain indifferent to its rapid downward spiral.

At the regional and international levels, the Doha process triggered a race to the bottom in reaching out to the Taliban without demanding anything meaningful in return. Regional powers such as Russia, Iran and China increased their outreach to the Taliban, using the pretext of the Doha process and freedom of movement for their leaders, and started openly hosting Taliban delegations and holding parallel talks. These parallel outreaches to the Taliban and other opposition political functions further destabilised the Afghan state and undermined the effectiveness of the Doha process.

Besides the Taliban, the Doha talks empowered the Pakistani establishment, which a year earlier was called by Trump as a ‘safe haven to agents of chaos, violence, and terror’. The primacy of political expediency or tangible peace-making in Doha brought Pakistan back to the regional diplomatic stage and changed it almost overnight from a country that, according to President Trump’s famous first tweet of 2018, offered only ‘lies and deceit’ into the main player, deal broker tasked with delivering the good-Taliban on the negotiation table in Doha (Roggio, 2019). While Pakistan, along with China and to some extent Russia and Iran, were united by their desire to expedite an unceremonious US/NATO retreat from Afghanistan, they were not particularly interested in a US-designed political settlement on the basis of the Doha agreement.

The build-up to the Doha talks also brought the Haqqani network and the Quetta Shura closer than ever before, especially since the two started cooperating in the mid-1990s. As part of the ‘diplomatic efforts’, the Haqqani network, designated as a terrorist organization which the former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Admiral Mike Mullen had referred to as a ‘veritable arm of Pakistan’s Inter-Service Intelligence agency’, became part of the Taliban’s negotiation team.

However, the manner in which Kabul fell and the Taliban factions rose left only Pakistan and China in a position of greater influence and critical responsibility. Other external players such as India, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and the EU relied on the success of the US-led Doha talks and were left to fend for themselves.

Taliban’s Political Agenda

The Taliban entered the Doha talks with a clear understanding of the US’ deadlines and political urgency for withdrawal, regional countries’ antagonism against the US presence in Afghanistan, and President Ghani’s deteriorating legitimacy. Senior Western diplomats rushed to Doha to meet with the Taliban, and some even secretly invited them over to Europe to offer their own interpretation of how the new Taliban had transformed in many ways from their old version in the 1990s and how they sought to avoid a resurrection of the brutal Islamic Emirate.

However, according to Wardak, the Taliban perceived their entry into the peace talks as part of their jihad against Americans, emphasizing that ‘the goals of any kind of potential peace should be precisely the same as the goals of ongoing jihad itself’ (Wardak, 2019). As it was later proved by their lack of interest in a genuine negotiation for a political settlement with the Afghan Republic delegation in Doha, the Taliban considered the completed and unconditional withdrawal of the US/NATO from Afghanistan as the primary outcome of their diplomatic overture and a major step toward a total victory and reinstalment of their defunct Emirate.

The Taliban’s post-15 August internal squabble during the formation of their cabinet signalled a growing rift between a group that argues that the source of victory was political negotiations in Doha and an opposing group that believes the triumph was a result of their military audacity. While the Taliban achieved what they wanted, either by political means through the so-called peace talks or by military means, which meant unleashing an excruciating level of violence, or a combination of the two Doha, the Doha agreement and its consequences, in hindsight, looks like a ‘total and unmitigated defeat’ (Kristol, 2021).

From a historical and elevated perspective, the collection of factors examined above is largely the symptoms of underlying structural flaws and wrongheaded assumptions upon which the post-Bonn Afghan state was established. A deeper understating of the inherent causes of state collapse requires a survey of its hasty inception and birth defect in late 2001.

The Original Sin: Re-Establishing the Incompatible State

The history of the nation and state building in Afghanistan after its territorial frontiers were defined by a series of boundary commissions and treaties during the reign of Amir Abdul Rahman Khan (1880–1901) is a story of trials and failures. Though initially attractive, the ruthless method employed by him and his successors to create a centralized state went against the two fundamental features of the arbitrarily curved territorial state; first, a rugged and impenetrable geography; second, a profoundly heterogeneous and fiercely independent inhabitant. Subsequent attempts over the past 140 years sadly followed a somewhat similar view of the nation-state building that resulted in a frequent state collapse, and further strained state-society relations in Afghanistan.

The latest attempt at state-building, this time with overwhelming support from the international community and after Afghanistan endured a decade-long bloody civil war, started in December 2001 in the German city of Bonn. The document that established the Bonn process, formally known as ‘the Agreement on Provisional Arrangements in Afghanistan Pending the Re-Establishment of Permanent Government Institutions’, was a diplomatic improvisation for managing the political transition in a post-civil war Afghanistan (Andisha, 2020).

The process which laid the foundation of another centralized political system is often blamed for its unambitious and superficial discussions, a quick-fix bureaucratic approach, and a narrow institutional design ignoring the underlying internal and external causes of the then 30 years of conflict.

While sceptics might discard the whole notion of the post-cold war liberal international state-building, the efforts in Afghanistan, if reflected and designed differently, were not destined for inevitable failure. The original sin of the Bonn process, according to Murtazishvili, was the resurrection of

old institutions that had their roots in Afghanistan’s authoritarian past rather than giving citizens the opportunity to build something new that embodied the country’s self-governance norms. Despite Afghanistan’s ethnic diversities and autonomous regions, there was no effort to reform the highly centralized system that had been a source of Afghan instability for generations. (Murtazashvili, 2022)

Instead of sizing the historical opportunity of domestic and international convergence and interest in state-building in Afghanistan, the dominant approach in Bonn revolved around ‘re-establishing’ a government institution rather than negotiating a substantive settlement for the underlying social and political cause of Afghanistan’s protracted conflict. Therefore, the four politically rival Afghan groups gathered at Bonn were under immense pressure from the international convenors to quickly conclude their negotiation (Chandra, 2009).

As a result, the interim and transitional administrations (2002–2004) created a co-opted centralized structure with a president as the head of state and government and five vice-presidents each drawn from major political and ethnic groups at the helm. The transitional period, according to Andisha,

instead of serving as a free chapter for crafting a new social contract and laying the foundation of Afghanistan for the 21^st century and becoming an opportunity for remedying the painful legacy and historical injustices, was surreptitiously used to prop up a centralized model as the most viable option. (Andisha, 2020)

In his recent brief analysis of ‘Why nation-building failed in Afghanistan’, Daron Acemoglu, a prominent economist and author, emphasizes that

in viewing nation-building as a top-down, ‘state-first’ process, US policymakers were following a venerable tradition in political science. The assumption is that if you can establish overwhelming military dominance over a territory and subdue all other sources of power, you can then impose your will. Yet in most places, this theory is only half right at best; and in Afghanistan, it was dead wrong. (Acemoglu, 2021)

The designers and implementor of the Bonn process, intentionally or unwisely, used every possible means at their disposal to ensure horizontal and vertical centralization of powers and responsibilities. For example, in one hand a rigid interpretation of a Weberian notion of state and monopoly of force as the most desirable approach to state-building and on the other hand excessive emphasis on the existential threat of warlords and regional strong man were put forward in favour of ratification of a consolidated presidential system (Andisha, 2020).

While a multi-ethnic and bilingual society such as Afghanistan, in the words of Francesc Vendrell, long-time UN and EU special representative, ‘needed a decentralized parliamentary system which would spread power among several categories of people, [not] a presidential system concentrating power in one person who was irremovable during his five-year mandate’ (Vendrell, 2012).

The process of centralization was completed when the final ratified version of the constitution established a unitary presidential system. While during the interim and transitional period there were five vice-chairs, including a woman, and each had a designated executive portfolio, the constitution reduced the number of vice presidents to two without a set portfolio. In this winner takes all system, the president was the head of state, head of government and held enormous power over the judiciary and legislative branches. The two vice presidents were ceremonial positions intended for representatives of ethnic groups other than the president and physically signified the diversity of the nation and the inclusivity of the state.

With all powers vested in a single person, that is, the president, there was a little legal avenue for meaningful checks and balances in case of abuses of executive powers by the president or his close aides. Operating under the president’s thumb, the judiciary never rose to the challenge of an independent branch of a democratic state and remained as a traditional department of the executive branch. And finally, a single non-transferable electoral system (SNTV) led to a weak and ineffective legislature (Andisha, 2020).

On the other hand, relations between national and sub-national units followed a strict pattern of centralization. The main argument in favour of such a system was the existence of entrenched regional strongmen warlords capable of challenging the central government’s authority. Nevertheless, the appointed governors and sub-governors, neither accountable nor representative of the people they were supposed to govern, often became a liability to the state-building process. Elected provincial councils had no budgetary or decision-making authority in their own local administration, and constitutionally mandated district council and municipal elections had not been held (Worden, 2011).

In less than a decade, the inconsistent state-building process went through a severe stress test during the 2009 presidential elections which clearly revealed the flaws of a winner takes all centralized and majoritarian presidential system based on the ill-suited (SNTV) electoral method. After allegations of widespread fraud and a recount audit by the UN, the election went to a runoff. The opposition contender, former Foreign Minister Dr Abdullah Abdullah, withdrew when his demand for reform in the leadership of the election commission was refused. The incumbent, Hamid Karzai, retained his job for another 5 years term; however, there was no role for a loyal opposition in the system.

Demands for electoral reform leading to constitutional reform, no matter how popular and pressing, had no chance of being translated into policy action. It was only one ‘man’ in the system without whose consent nothing substantial was possible and that man was the then President Hamid Karzai. He was more afraid of reforming a centralized state than losing it to the Taliban. Hence, instead of looking inward and addressing the domestic and legitimate concerns, the ruling elite found it more convenient to blame interference of foreign circles as the main source of trouble.

Despite the bitter lesson from 2009 and no meaningful reform in the electoral system, the 2014 election saw the highest turnout of eligible voters, as it was meant to be a historic event where for the first time in Afghanistan’s history, a transition of power from an incumbent president to a new one would be decided by ballots: one person one vote. The runoff election between Dr Abdullah Abdullah and Ashraf Ghani, however, became marred by incredible irregularities and in some cases outright fraud. In an unwritten pact, the incumbent president Hamid Karzai, the leadership of the election commission and Ashraf Ghani’s campaign, evidence of which was partly presented by Rahmatullah Nabil, the former head of Afghanistan’s National Directorate of Security (NDS), decided to use ‘every conceivable mean’ to prevent the frontrunner’s victory. Evidence of fraud, codenamed ‘stuffed sheep’, widely circulated by media implicated the chief electoral officer, Zialuhaq Amarkhil, a Ghani supporter and later his senior advisor in orchestrating massive fraud and ballot stuffing along ethnic lines in favour of Ashraf Ghani in several southern provinces. In a detailed analysis of 2014 election data, Professor Thomas H. Johnson of the Naval Postgraduate School concluded that ‘Ghani’s campaign was at least partially, if not primarily, based on fraud… [t]hese results in combination with other analyses presented earlier raise the very real possibility that the election results of Ashraf Ghani in 2014 were illegitimate’. Despite all odds, Ashraf Ghani, the neoliberal co-founder of Washington DC-based think tank, the Institute for State Effectiveness, was seen on one hand as the darling of the western embassies and lobbies and on the other hand the guardian of a ‘strong’ centralized presidential system.

After months of political tension and the imminent fear outbreak of violence, the bitterly contested and inconclusive election saga ended with a political agreement and the formation of a National Unity Government brokered by then Secretary of State John Kerry. As Johnson succinctly summarized it, ‘the failure of the election process and the ad hoc nature of the agreement between the candidates underlined the continuing deep flaws in Afghanistan’s political system and political culture’ (Johnson, 2018). To many Afghans, especially the young and aspirant generation, the setup of 2014 election and its results tarnished their faith in democratic politics as a vehicle for reform and change.

Conclusion

A complete withdrawal of the US/NATO air and logistics support to Afghanistan’s armed forces, political and diplomatic legitimacy bestowed on Taliban as a result of the Doha agreement signed between the US and Taliban, and President Ghani’s arrogant and eccentric personality played a major role in the precipitous collapse of the democratic state in Afghanistan. However, the fundamental structural and deep-rooted socio-political factors which challenged the establishment of a sustainable state and sense of ownership among diverse communities in Afghanistan were linked to the breakdown of the social contract between the state and society. The overly centralized institutional design and a quick-fix bureaucratic approach employed by the designers of the Bonn process failed to address these underlying causes of the decades of civil war in the country.

Instead of rebalancing power and responsibilities between central and provincial governments through democratic participation, the system discouraged political parties, limited the prospects of empowerment and upward mobility of local communities, local accountability, and trust building, and deepened the existing ethnic, linguistic and social cleavages.

Even in the months before the collapse, despite general apathy toward President Ghani’s policies and personal intransigence, and notwithstanding diplomatic and political pressure from the international partners, there was no accessible legal mechanisms to peacefully remove him. Exploiting the full spectrum of constitutional powers given to the president, Ghani intrinsically tied the existence of state institutions to his person. Nothing meaningful was possible while he was at the helm, and everything dissolved when he decided to flee. From this angle, the tragic fall of Afghanistan on 15 August 2021 shows that at the systemic level, structural deficiency in ensuring proper public checks and balances when combined with the zealotry of top leaders have once again destroyed two decades of investment with blood and treasure for building a viable state in Afghanistan.

The Taliban regime suffers from domestic and international legitimacy problems, and their governance model, a centralized Pashtun-dominated theocracy, not only undermines Afghanistan’s unity, political and social diversity, it is heading toward increased tensions and impending new conflict. It appears that Afghanistan’s old guard and their international friend are once again trying to ‘fix’ the problem of ‘inclusivity’ through unrepresentative, provenly ineffective old institutions and rubber stamp institutions.

The past four decades of conflict and intermittent state-building efforts prove that durable peace and sustainable state in Afghanistan requires an inclusive and presentative governance structure which could guarantee meaningful participation of ensuring local accountability and ownership among all communities and groups.