Warlords and States: The Neglected Total Spoiler Nexus in Afghanistan

As a consequence of this continuous state of war, Afghanistan now faces overwhelming reconstructive challenges. The country’s infrastructure has been nearly completely destroyed, some two million people have been killed, and another six million have become refugees, making Afghans the largest group of refugees in the world. Afghanistan’s population is among the poorest in the world, it is regarded as the country most affected by landmines with about 10 million mines, and a state of ‘lawlessness’ prevails in most of the country. This paper is concerned both with how the successive conflicts have been managed as well as with the peace-building process in Afghanistan. While there are multiple causes that account for the failure of the peace process at the beginning of the 1990s and many actors that play an important role in the Afghan context, I will consider only the relationships between the governments of the states involved in supporting different factions within Afghanistan. The examination of the relationships between governments is important specifically because decisions around the support of these factions were made at the highest levels of government.