Afghanistan: What Happens Next?

The past two weeks have seen the Taliban return to power more rapidly than the regime’s fall nearly 20 years ago. Many observers of Afghanistan feared that the nation’s fragile democracy would not last long beyond the withdrawal of American troops but very few predicted that this transition would happen over a matter of days rather than months or years. The unexpected nature of this transition should prompt humility in any analyst but the questions raised are all the more important. In evaluating the past: Was this outcome inevitable or could the government have survived with different decisions by the international community? On paper, the Afghan government looked far more capable than it proved to be once the Taliban advance began—was it merely being propped up by American military power or could it have rallied the political, social and military support from Afghanistan’s 38 million citizens to hold out? Was the weakness of the government due to a fatal flaw in design: a highly-centralised structure in a traditionally decentalised nation? A state dependant on foreign aid rather than localised production? Massive influx of foreign funds with the predictable spurring of corruption? Or was a basically workable structure subverted by US diversion of attention to the war in Iraq before the fledgling Afghan government would establish a firm foundation? Questions about the future: How might an Afghan government be structured to avoid the dysfunctions of the past—whether the past 20 years of post-Taliban rule or any of the dysfunctional governments of the three decades that preceded it? What role can the international community play? Or should the international community simply conclude that its involvement only does more harm than good? Most importantly, what can Afghan people themselves do to avoid a return to the 1990s—whether the bloody chaos of the civil war or the repressiveness of the prior Taliban regime?